The sun is dragging low inside your breath.
Each step you take sounds brittle in the shale—
a knock of bone on slate, the quiet death
of cartilage that’s learned it cannot heal.
The plain beneath us scraped to something bare,
a sheet of iron hammered past the breaking form;
your weight slips once; your hand rakes empty air,
then hooks the rock, the threshold rough and worn.

Son, we came here to name our ruin,
not mend it. Past the tree line’s ragged mark,
the wounds you carried into me lie strewn
in talus. All that’s left of men grows stark
and simple—bone and weather, breath and dune.
Take what remains. The mountain keeps the dark.