Fiction | February 01, 2018
The First to Leave Is the Winner
Becky Mandelbaum
For a brief period in my late twenties, I lived alone on a horse ranch at 9,500 feet in the San Juan Mountains. The closest human heartbeat was thirteen miles away, the nearest airport two hundred. The altitude gave me vertigo and headaches and months of spectacular, disturbing dreams, but it was worth it for the sky, which was grandiose and constantly changing, a lava lamp let loose of its goblet. Never had I seen a sky like that, and I haven’t seen one since. Granted, I haven’t been looking.
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