In the beginning,
I wandered through a thick sunflower field.
Each passing day I grew closer and closer to the edge.
The way I started my descent,
I sat with my legs off the cliff,
Swinging them back and forth.
Next,
I inched down,
But was suddenly pushed because my heart broke.
Then coaxed by others hanging,
And well,
My curiosity led me on.

Now I have both hands on the cliff.
When I glance down,
My eyes widen.
I can't see anything,
It's pitch black with uncertainty,
A chilly breeze flows by.
Well that's a lie,
I can see a faint light,
But it's dim,
And a part of me wants to let go,
To fall,
Down,
Down,
Down.
My stomach does flips and tricks,
As I contemplate.
There's an excitement to it,
And curiosity again creeps up in my mind.
Accompanying the obscurity below,
The scent of tobacco and alcohol makes me scrunch up my nose.

I decide to gaze up,
I can hear laughter,
And light hearted banter.
The tantalizing smell of sugary candy,
Pleases me more.
The sky is pure baby blue,
No puffy cotton candy clouds,
And the sunshine warms the field.
Giant sunflowers sways back and forth,
Their golden color almost matching the brilliant sun.
Mindless daydreams appear,
And the notion of fairy tale love,
Causes my heart to swell,
I start to pull myself back up...

And I slip,
Beginning to fall backwards.
I scream.
Clawing at the side of the cliff,
My hands grab onto a small ledge and again I am hanging,
My legs dangling,
I'm a child on the monkey bars.
Wait no,
I am not a child.
But...
I don't feel like letting go just yet.
Why do I always try to traverse back up,
When every single time I’ve ended up farther down than before?
I don’t know.
Slowly,
I manage to rest myself on a small ledge.

Then as I’m speculating,
My eyes notice a small flower,
Growing on the vines that covered parts of the cliff,
Its petals surrounding itself.
Its color was white,
Clean like paper,
Resembling airy snow.
I reach out to touch it,
But retract my hand,
Hesitant.
It was the only other flower I had seen,
I was only familiar with the sunflowers,
But this one...
It wasn't blooming.
Again,
I extend my arm,
But I move the tiny flower away from what little sunlight reaches it,
And now complete darkness surrounds it,
As I hid it in a crevice.

I am not alone in this.
I know that much.
I can hear others shouting,
And falling.
Even if there is no sound,
I know there's always someone falling.
Some manage to climb up,
But never back onto the sunflower field.
They at least prolong their trip downwards,
Hugging the cliff even more.

Some don't even look before they disappear.
They step out of the field,
Then leap,
And dive right down,
As if they were young Icarus flying too close to the sun.
No matter what,
You always go down.

As I cling to the cliff,
The bright star above completes its journey for the day,
And is replaced with its ominous counterpart.
Sighing,
I stroke the closed petals of the white flower,
Knowing what usually comes next,
The night brings more to fall,
But as I tenderly pull the white flower from the crack,
The moon light greets it,
And soon it's petals begin to spread,
Blooming.
It reveals a dot of yellow,
Surrounding a circle of ghostly white.
A sense of comfort fills me,
Watching this long moment occur.
Darkness could transform things,
To become something beautiful.

My thoughts turn into questions as the night continues,
As I wonder what it'll be like when I fall.
What will it be like when I reach the bottom?
What is that light?
Will there be more white flowers?

But all in all,
This is not the end,
Far from it,
I know.
I'm waiting for my turn,
To finally let go and fall from grace.
But while I wait,
I’ll keep enjoying the sights above,
While pondering my coming life below.

To live a life in perspective
I’m told you need to define a horizon
line eye level to the viewer.

From my hill of years the view is fluid
as in watery, but also as in unpredictable.

On the sea’s face a wall of fog moves in
and out like histories remembered
and forgotten.

Sometimes silver striates the sea
with such a glitter of insight
I am bedazzled and cannot look.

Sometimes fogbank and ocean merge
with such blue-gray unity it seems
the horizon rises so that I stand on
the shore, dwarfed by a surf of knowledge
that pounds at my ignorance.

Sometimes the sea becomes invisible,
the white air a questioning emptiness,
a finger-touch of damp against the cheek.

My uncle used to tell me that the sky was blue because we lived inside the eye of a giant, the sky would never cloud over, Nothing would ever feel better because it was already the best it could feel,
Nothing was ever going to hurt us and we could live our entire lives safely

When I was 14 years old my uncle took his own life by hanging, but my family always told me he passed away in a car crash,
Now I don't remember the last time I wore a seatbelt because ever since then I've had a really hard time believing in safety

I'm so scared of never being able to not feel like this,
To not feel like I am being taken advantage of,
My mind will forever consider these situations no matter what situation I am in,
I could stay up night after night trying to convince myself otherwise,
not that it would make any kind of difference,
So whenever I find something new and refreshing, all I know how do is sit in silence,
Hope to quiet this strange hurricane happening inside of me,
It kind of feels like one of these days the winds are gonna rip me to shreds, but I won't have the help, because I'll tell myself that I don't need it, anyways

I am terrified of calling myself a writer,
I am terrified of realizing that the only escape I have from this is a pen and a piece of paper,
Anxiety keeps telling me that one day all of the ink is going to spill out and the only option I'll have left is to take myself out,
They'll have to see me laying in a puddle of my own ink, my veins soaking in what once was my emotions and feelings, dripping through the floorboards and into the ground,
After that they'll see my entire body sink,
They'll see every comma and exclamation point flow out of my fingers and feet like it's some kind of tar filled river,
They'll see my lips start to quiver and the only thing left to come out,
The only thing they'll ever hear me say ever again,
Will be a sliver,
"I don't know why I am apologizing, but I'm so sorry that it never got better"

I wake up every morning and I am terrified,
I'm terrified of the nightmares I had the night prior,
When my best friend told me that I'd burn in a lake of fire because of my depression, that I wasn't normal, and that I had a disease,
That I was so sad all of the time because I didn't believe in a God,
That I was so hopeless because I wasn't leaning on some overplayed fake version of reassurance,
That I chose to pray to these demons to set me free,
The same demons that cast these shadows over me,
I remember yelling through tears at him, "I don't need to believe in a God to believe in myself",
I'm trying my best, but at this point, good things always seem so foreign to me,
It just seems so foreign to breathe

So until I reach that breaking point, where the moon and the sun are both only arbiters of light that I can use to guide myself through this darkness, through what feels like never ending night,
I'll be terrified of everyone and everything

I'll either get to happiness, or I'll die trying