Josh Pearce
The mountain range (she) is bare and white and sleeps in ups and downs like rumpled bedsheets. From the excavated dish of her mid (unruffled) riff I walk toward gentle inclines the tips of which are alive with roses. Up the strata of ribs I leave no footprints, cast no shadow as light flecks reflect off her every angle. In her last dendrite trees twitch the bluebirds of sleep from black branch to black branch. I am shorter and shorter of breath closer and closer to her final summit and here her trees alight, each dangled ganglia leaves turning orange red green yell with arousal of dreams and here the most zen of mount aineers would retreat, frozen, from the mound respect for the mountain. But I delve her, watch the trees blossom white fruit flower sparks. She mutters pleasure breaths through the copse, washes the flowers off and out across her thighs. The mountain sighs, murmurs, turns over in her sleep.
Josh Pearce is an assistant editor at Locus with writing in Analog, Asimov's, Beneath
Ceaseless Skies, Clarkesworld, and others. His favorite lunar feature is Sinus Iridum but his favorite moon in the Solar System is Umbriel. Find more of his work at fictionaljosh.com.