40 Days (Movement III - Kingdom)

Wind moves warm across three hundred meters of orange stone. Nothing about this height asks anything of my knees. Three hundred meters, barely a hill by any honest measure, yet somehow the whole Jordan Valley unrolls beneath the rise. Orange stone still warm from a day I don't remember starting, palm trees small enough to disappear inside my hand. Everything. Just... Everything. No catch, he keeps saying like the word does something on its own. My mouth's already halfway to yes, and I haven't decided a thing. Forty days, and my hands don't remember how to close around nothing. Everything one kingdom folded into a word. One knee for a name already halfway bent. The wind hasn't stopped being warm this whole time. What do I call this? South of here the ground falls to the lowest place on Earth. Water so heavy nothing drowns. It only floats and waits. A valley. A sea that kills nothing. Hills across the river— Moab, once. A kingdom, once. Now just a name the wind still carries. Everything? That's... Everything? He's not lying that's the part I didn't plan for. The view fits inside my eyes, small, easy, already memorized. So why is the wanting taking up the whole room? Everything still folding kingdoms into a word. One knee for a name I already know. The wind hasn't stopped being warm, and I haven't stopped standing. What do I call this? Forty days should have earned me something I could hold. A city. A kingdom. An ending. Forty days should have left me finished. Instead I keep reaching for something that isn't missing. Everything... Costs... Everything. Everything always had a price I couldn't see from here. Not one kingdom. Not one knee. I'll leave with empty hands and I don't know yet whether I refused it, or simply remembered what was already mine. Three hundred meters. The valley stays a valley. My knees... never touch the ground.