Prelude in minor tones

I like to dangle myself out over edges, real and imagined

as if to challenge gravity and mortality

before the terror strikes and my body seizes up.

The edges, balance beams, reaching out into the sky,

walking with nimble-footed confidence

that should not belong to me

given my track record

of epic falls.

It isn’t so much the vertigo that calls,

but the impulse to jump!

The push-pull joy of fear of joy

that calls me to these edges,

where I vacillate,

playfully,

alone.

Retreat? Jump? Fall? Trip?

What if someone sees me? Captures my flush-faced humiliation

on camera, or in their mind, and reminds me of it,

acting as a mirror from which I cannot

hide?

But what if no one is watching?

Where do I place that mixed-emotion, jelly-legged

false bravado?

The thing about edges is, they embody hope.

Or despair.

And you never know which one until you have wordlessly

thrown yourself over to the other side.

Do we let go? Release, just like that, the possibility that had percolated

up through our veins?

Do I enumerate for no one all the things we will never do together,

the ruins we didn’t conquer in the jungle,

the nights of skin on skin, drenched in sweat,

of sweetness forgotten on a shelf of what if, someday, maybe… not.

My house feels empty. The bed bereft.

I’ve never been one for gentle let downs, quiet exits stage left.

You know this, you must.

The flickering of the blue screen tricked my eyes.

I will tell myself it was all an illusion,

and tuck my indecorous passion back under its translucent shell.

My muscles ache with clench-jawed ferocity,

the silence that bullies me into submission.

Trust no one, you will tell me, wordlessly.

I accept.