The day you dunked my body
in the deepest river of Yosemite,
you spoke your hometown underwater,
said it will burn in the next decade.
All I could think about was the first person
to free solo-climb El Capitán and survive.
Alexander Honnold wedged his fingers and fists
between a system of cracks in the rocks
until he found the summit. Three years later,
Yosemite floods by a melting of immense snowpack,
landing in 40 inches along the valley’s floor.
We’ve divorced our seasons by now
and quieted our touch. But I am sure
we mourn the same headlines,
lying in separate beds across the ocean.
I still see us there. Washing our arms
and necks and wrapping each other
in cloth. Alexander still climbs the 150 feet
downward to the Heart Ledges, while
we hold each other there, not yet knowing
what rises in smoke, what boils beyond
those mountaintops, or who murmurs
our end in the skies.
Emmy Roday holds a B.A. in English Literature and Arabic Language from Kenyon College, including a year of study at the University of Exeter. She worked as an editorial assistant for the Kenyon Review and founded a publishing press for emerging writers. Her love of language and youth empowerment took her to Morocco, where she completed the Critical Language Scholarship in Arabic, and to the Philippines, where she worked for an INGO running psychosocial poetry workshops for at-risk youth. Emmy taught English literature and creative writing in Brooklyn and now works at Gisha, a human rights organization whose goal is to protect the freedom of movement of Palestinians, especially Gaza residents. She also serves as the Poetry Editor of Write-Haus. You can find her poetry in Symposeum, Minyan, and Dust Poetry Magazine among others.