I started skydiving
                because I loved the idea
                of freedom.
                        -Felix Baumgartner

plunging and plummeting…
tumbling and dropping…

i quite like
having my feet
on the ground

a safe soft earth
can’t shatter
my bones
if i never dare
to fly

descending tailspin
nosedive crashing

but a safe soft earth
is also one
that doesn’t turn 

i can be okay with that
until i’m not

stumbling slipping tripping
toppling flopping plopping

it’s easy to deflect
when she’s a bartender
who doesn’t date her customers
or when i meet her at the time clock
and she doesn’t go out with coworkers

but what about the girl
who is neither of those things

slumping keeling
crumpling

she exposes
a deeper level
of damage
yet unprocessed 

a new way to fall

depleting decaying degrading
devalued deteriorated regressed

a trauma of rejection
that still entraps

the emptiness within
expanding infinitely
i’m adrift
in my own cosmos

where did the earth go
safe soft earth

diminishing decreasing declining

subsiding shrinking vanishing

do i just not exist in the skies of others
does my light never reach distant worlds 
how can i keep watching planets collide
while floating in the midst of space 
completely untouched
 

failed folded conceded
lost given up
 
i see you and think
that’s such a long fall
i’ll never survive

better to retreat 
preserve potential
over definitive denial 

but is that
life
is that living
i have to jump

and what if she says no
like all the rest

then we splat
then we start healing wounds 
rebuild courage
climb back up
find a new place to jump

and we jump
we leap
we spring
we dive
as many times as it takes
until we find home
no longer bound by fear

safe soft earth

i quite like
having my feet
on the ground