Our clementine body climbed Mount Everest 
to remember what being loved was like.

Base camp
I wrote your name
on first page of my leather journal--
the one my father read me 
bed time stories from. He told
my brother and I
 about time travel--
about alien abduction 
and filling dresser drawers
with painted turtles-- sometimes
I would blink and watch the
walls of my room fall away like 
the peel of a clementine.
He boiled clementine peels
when he was done cleaning the kitchen
and the walls would
peel away into a home--

1.
My guide told me I was too
thin-- told me to wait a year
a month a week even-- learn
to eat mashed potatoes and 
pour gravy in pirouettes--
build volcanoes like a god--
 He offered me
a skewer of goat around the
heat lamp that night--
I told him I don't eat meat
and he laughed and told
me that we all eat meat--
the the mountain eats me
and that the mountain eats
names--
I didn't believe him because
we hadn't spoken enough 
mountain yet-- not enough
breath-- not enough knees 
not enough arguments with
God and our fathers
who we meet at the door step--

2.
There were two others. A couple--
kissed cold off each other's wrists--
and when I asked their name 
they told me "Us" and I told
them to call me "Air"
because I wanted to feel needed.
Instead they called me "I"
and I know that's what I am--
Us broke their granola bars in two
pieces-- they ate goat skewers
and left their notebooks at base
camp--

3.
Departing each camp felt like
peeling my memory slow--
careful abandonment of the peel
the smell of Christmas eve
and Easter and funeral brunches--
my fingers were sticky and 
we all called my nickname--
Air, air, air, air
I never asked the guide's name.
Air, air, air, air
And sometimes I thought again
about my bed room windows
and dressers full of painted
turtles and if there was someone
to catch my memory as I stripped--
walked naked minded into 
the white blank face of God--

4.
This is where we leave everything.
this is where we have no skin
or white veins to call ourselves
a clementine--
I remember feeling hungry
again even though we had just eaten
or had we just eaten? Had we
eaten rocks or the legs of the
goat or what was left of the 
Air, air, air, air
Us never walked single file
and the guide hummed 
prayers to the starved lips
of the rocks-- the carnivorous 
cold that yearned for 
Air, air, air, air
Where had I written your name?
Was it my name all along or
the name of my father?
Or the name of the mountain 
tricking me into some conquest
of love-- had we love top 
bring to the face of a God
who looked at the bare minds
of a his tiny frozen
meat-eating people-- where
we people if no one
knew out names--
what was us without a half
and the guide hummed
and it was me and him
at camp 4-- which is another name
for purgatory-- 
My journal is useless if
I don't have words left
in my mouth-- the mountain ate 
them along with Us--

Summit
We read bed time stories and my father
narrated each of my foot steps--
This was the first time since
base camp I could picture anything
about you-- it was kissing 
and kissing stones from
my forehead-- and me
kissing you like notebook 
paper-- kissing your name into
heaven who mocked me so 
close with the absence of 
Air, air, air, air
 you held me finally like
a painted turtle-- stripped 
me citrus and Christmas 
and we ate goat meat in skewers--
I don't remember breathing but
I remember being alive somehow--
And there was just me and you
and whatever is left
after your memory is eaten
by the air-- I saw it all
-- smelled your arms 
and the living room and the view
out the bed room windows--
and my father narrated us kissing 
and was it your name or mine?--
Oh! Who gave me hands to write
or lips that eat meat on 
the mountain top--
there was nothing left to 
call because your name
had only been an echo or
maybe a bed time story I repeated
enough to make true-- 
Oh! What does my love call themselves?
Call me-- call me
Air, air, air, air
and pull me peel back each memory
until our skin itself
feels nameless--