The Acrophobic

by Judith Skillman

I spent the last ten years of my life flirting
with height, longed to ride the gondola

up the mountain—its glass sides swaying
above the green ravine that climbed,

like a vine, up and up almost into
the sky. I read travelogues, imagined summits,

watched films of alpinists who balanced
between Tibet and China on the ridge

of Everest, or took on K2—which one’s
worse than Annapurna? It seemed the birds’

vertigo in my head when I walked the stairs
to the lab, their open scaffolding,

the air between each step
pulling breath from my lungs as if I were

at altitude. Against that abyss—
the job where, retired, I dragged myself

back to be my own boss—the view was fresh.
It took off, finally, the science

of our sun, a yellow dwarf around which
my body flung itself once a year.