mountains

the vastness is easy to lose sight of when it's just a shape
a decoration of the distance
an aesthetic glory torn from the side of a water bottle label
and pasted onto the horizon
nameless as any other, taken for granted

until someone spreads out a map
and vertigo sits in
as you stand on what you forgot was a hill
peering through a hundred miles of sky
and wonder if the world is really so small
or bigger than you had forgotten