Fall

I used my heartbeat as a countdown as I waited with frozen breath for the freefall. I felt like everyone was watching with me — waiting for the world to collapse on itself and let us out, like air out of a bag. I grew up afraid of vertigo as much as I was afraid of heights; I caught flies in my fears and never felt as alone as I did looking up at the clouds. They all jumped up there — the dancing dreamers and the kids who could make shapes out of nothing. I shuddered at the incessant whispers and I promised myself to make evanescence out of permanence. People fall like it’s nothing, but I have been so used to traversing sideways, the person who never knew anything but the horizon. They thrown down ropes and they tease me with their swinging, but I could never leave the ground. And now they’re breaking barriers and now they’re visiting the moon and now I am addicted to loathing my fears. They’re pulling me like crisp leaves, painting metaphors of a sort of autumn in my mind. I wanted to look up so badly but my eyes seek the ground. Oh how I hate the voices in my head. The world watches me with frozen heartbeats and I let go of my last breath and I let go of the ropes and I became the dancing dreamer that never woke up.