Vertigo
Approaching midnight
and the gouges of a mountain
lean over us, weeping boulders.
Each bend is a hook, hauling us higher.
The car howls like a colicky child.
I grip the door, you tug at the wheel,
a cracked silence thrumming
about whose idea this was.
No other car for half an hour,
Forty-five minutes, an hour,
and with the greasy humour that accompanies
fantasies of certain death; the thought,
no-one could rescue us from here.
Here. At six thousand feet
where the car stops,
drops its nose, sags on its wheels.
Spain to the left of us, France to the right,
and below, a lake of cloud
turning mercury in the moonlight.
Tina Sederholm is a poet, editor and creator of four spoken word Edinburgh Fringe shows, variously reviewed as ‘Completely spell-binding’ (EdFringe Review) and ‘Stunning’ (Three Weeks). Her collection, Everything Wrong With You Is Beautiful is published by Burning Eye.