Poems by Rose

If It’s Lonely, Then You Did It Wrong

 

They say it’s lonely at the top, as though the mountain made that rule,

as though success requires a crown and mercy somehow marks a fool,

as though the only way to rise is planting boots on someone’s back

and calling every hand you passed another thing you had to lack.

 

But I have never wanted height that left the ones I love below,

nor needed someone else made small to prove how far I chose to go.

If I have found a steadier ledge, if I have learned where stone gives way,

then I can throw a rope behind me without surrendering my place.

 

I can tell you where the shale runs loose, where blood once warmed my hands,

where pride convinced me I was ready before the mountain changed its plans.

I can brace myself and help you climb; I can pull when I have room,

but I will not become your footing just to spare you every wound.

 

There is a difference between lifting and becoming someone’s ground,

between offering another strength and letting them keep dragging you down.

I will never knot your full weight to my waist and call it love,

then lose the ledge I fought to reach because you never learned to climb.

 

But if you climb, then climb beside me. There is more than one good view.

The sky does not belong to me simply because I reached it before you.

Move closer. Let the summit hold more laughter than we were foretold;

let there be shoulders touching shoulders where they promised only cold.

 

And when another hand appears beneath us, reaching through the thinning air,

perhaps the greatest proof we made it is that we still have strength to share.

Let every person lifted learn to lower their own rope in turn,

until the mountain glows with campfires and a thousand small lights burn.

 

Maybe it was never lonely at the top

because the top was never meant for one.

 

Maybe some people reached it lonely

because they cut every rope

once they were done.