by Cassandra Latisse

Created on: September 10, 2008

Climb
By Cassandra Latisse

Climb, Kip. One foot over the other. Next foot. Hand. C'mon Kip, this is for Zenith. Rise, scramble up until the muscles in your back throb, and the blisters on your hands rip open and form new ones. The blood pours down your hands, and in that crystal-clear moment of pure clarity, you hear, see, feel and taste the wind on your face. Climb.

"Kip! Get down from there at once!"
I groaned. My mother's familiar voice broke in to my reverie, resembling the Sun barging in to the Moon's last moments of night. I had been working so hard to achieve this clearness, this comprehensibility that came with climbing up in the first instant of dawn, if you counted seven-twenty as dawn. When I climbed, I felt like those oranges that they always make the dumb commercials about on TV. "It's good to be a Sunkist," the cheesy-voiced announcer would always say before the screen flashed to the preview of the new Indiana Jones remake. The strange thing was, after the Sunkist commercials, they always showed the Indy trailer. And that's how I felt, climbing to the very top of the tallest pine tree in the park behind my house. Sun-kissed. I had always had a thing with trees, even since I was a baby. Mom blamed my love of trees on my dad, who had taken me up onto a tree for the first time when I was three weeks old. I had apparently not even been scared, just looked down at her with my big green eyes and gurgled. Of course, after my first climb I had been covered in pinesap, but it had been worth it. I fell in love that day, but not with a girl. You know that song, I'm In Love with a Girl' by Curtis something? Well, my song is I'm In Love with a Tree' by Kipling Birch. I guess it's ironic that my favorite tree to climb is a pine, and my last name is birch. I never really liked birches much. They're too white, if you know what I mean.
"Kipling Rian Birch! If you don't get over here right now I will personally ensure that you will not get any breakfast today!"
My mum's a very sweet person, as you can see.
"Ok, ok! I'll get down! Gawd, mum, why do you have to do that every morning?"
"Don't speak to your mother like that. And it's dangerous to climb trees that early in the morning! I read in The Superstition Informer that climbing trees before 9 o'clock is bad for a number 7, your number," she yelled out of the kitchen window.
Might I mention that my mum, along with being a very sweet person', is also superstitious?
I'd been doing this, trying to climb Zenith at dawn, for

• 1
• 2
• 3
• 4
• Next Page >>