Climbing Mt. Fuji

by David Thornbrugh

The heart she carried carried her to the top of Mt. Fuji her own not her own. A transplanted heart beats through fatigue not knowing when to relax, certain nerves once snipped cannot be reset signaling. Black lava sand sloping upward to Mt. Fuji fringed with bento boxes, Pocari Sweat cans, Top Ramen cups, a steady line of nature lovers climbing the holy mountain. Organ transplants up for a vote one reason to take a stranger's heart to the peak of Mt. Fuji but you can't make the Japanese do what you want them to do until they want to do it and then they do it long past the point you wished they'd stop. At the top, weeping, she shook out the ashes of the woman whose heart had taken her to the top.