The Black Mountain Top

Foolish, I was to climb alone. Betrayed, tempted and powerless, I saw people jumping off of the ship. There were millions of them. Aborted abandoned children, sick babies, and even scammers with gold crosses hanging from their necks. Afraid, I heard a voice say, “survive,” so I jumped off of the crowded ship into the water not knowing what was beneath me. I heard the screams of savages raping women as I felt myself floating. Treading water, I saw others being chased by men in white hoods. I felt myself drowning, but no one could save me but myself. In the distance, I noticed burning crosses and grown men hanging from trees. Why was I born? Am I cursed, only to tread water like a sinking elephant? Deprived of knowledge, I used my common sense and grabbed a piece of wood to float in the middle of the ocean. Quiet, I couldn’t help but notice the black mountain top on the island of truth where I found myself. Alone, I had to learn how to survive. The only thing on the island that I could see from down below was more land. The others had been traded and sold, but I jumped off of the ship and somehow survived. The only thing that I knew was the mother land, nothing else. Tired, I fell to sleep at the bottom of the black mountain hearing the cries of a future people never to know their true self. I lived the rest of my life on this island watching the merchant ships go by while hiding by the black mountain. Curious, one day a voice told me to climb and while climbing I finally reached the top and saw everything. I saw the trade, I saw the whips, and I saw reality.

 “Why was I spared?” I thought to myself.

Years had passed and I’d grown older, I’d adapted and got used to being alone. I’d climbed the black mountain a thousand times and observed the evolution of the trade. I’d watched a people that I once knew from the top of the mountain evolve into a different kind of being. On my last climb, there it was, a burning bush. Ignorant of its meaning, I sat by it to get warm because the island was cold at night. Cozy, it began to storm so I slept in a cave. I lived on this island and ate the fruits and drank the spring water from a rich black mountain for over seventy years. This mountain was all that I knew until one day a boat landed ashore with people who were evidently escaping the trade. Trying to speak to them, they couldn’t understand me, but I could tell by their clothes and lashes on their backs that they were victims of the trade. All my life I’d lived alone and I knew nothing  but the black mountain. I had to teach these people my language, I had to teach them how to climb, but most of all, I had to teach them how to survive. Eventually, we began to repopulate and would soon grow in numbers. At the age of ninety, standing with them by the black mountain, we too evolved and advanced with our own language and customs. We’d all learned how to survive and climb the black mountain together. They came to find freedom and I did the same. On my death bed, I observed what we had grown to become. I now knew why I survived, I now knew why I had to climb the black mountain over a thousand times. In the end, I did have a purpose. Me and the others would collect the messages in bottles floating on our shores, we’d expanded from one side of the island to the other. We’d grown so much that some of us lived on top of the black mountain. At the hour of my death, I comprehended one thing, and that was that only the strong survived. I survived the rough weather, I climbed the black mountain over a thousand times, I had to learn how to hunt for food, I had to learn how to grow food, I had to learn how to swim, and I had to teach the migrants who escaped to my island the same. As we grew and advanced in numbers, many of us became unsettled and we were so strong that we conquered a world that once traded us as slaves. Our greatest gift was our ability to survive. 

The Black Mountain Top