Stairs

Here I climb my solitary stairs,
Tired and sweaty as I grow.
I’m not sure where the climb began.
I can’t remember what the first stair looked like
Or what it felt like when my feet weren’t sore.

For all the time trapped in my mind I have marched:
Up and up, around and around these spiraling stairs,
Unsure where they lead.
I know it’s there though, the end... Of climbing anyway.

There’s something better up there, beyond the stairs.
A place of rest, I think,
Rest from the climbing.

The journey is not monotonous.
Some stairs have been broken before me… Abused.
Sometimes I crumble them beneath my own feet.
It makes it harder not to fall.

I’m tired and sweaty as I grow
Taller, maybe a bit wiser. Definitely more wary.
I watch more and more carefully for jutting crags,
For boulders and gaps in the stairs.
You’d be surprised how invisible they become on these foggy flights.

Sometimes I want to stop, just rest a while,
But when I look back I see that the stairs are gone,
Vanished behind me and fading beneath me.
There is nothing, or the climb.

The end is something I can’t see
I don’t know where it is,
I don’t know what it will look like,
And yet I feel no fear.

I hear whispers about the end.
They say many different things.
Here it is bliss, here it is torment,
Here it is even nonexistent: the stairs just stop then nothing.

It might be true, that last one.

Though I like to muse it's everything,

Nothing wouldn't be so bad.

I could return to the nothing and dream forever.

But for now, at least,
I am tired and sweaty as I grow.

I will climb.