Some like to call it the edge
The event horizon over which we peer into our own personal voids of
Emptiness, darkness, nothingness.
Gravity so strong no thought escapes
Stare too deep and you drown type rifts.
I’ve always thought it more like standing on train tracks
Watching the 8 am express race the sun
Barreling towards you
Closer and closer
Faster and faster
Stopping abruptly inches from your face.
Everything stops.
Wind, water, wings
All frozen in time as perfect statues of themselves.
You dare not move.
Existence could ripple through the air and set into motion a chain of events
That culminates with you painting the underside of 22 cars.
But standing still is just as disastrous.
At any time time may catch up with itself
And that train may catch up with you.
So there you stand
Motionless, breathless, soulless,
Staring down iron and steel,
Somehow trapped beyond the laws of man and reality
Contemplating the consequences of your next impulse.
Meanwhile,
The train has already hit you.
Your friends and family have arrived at the scene
And begun taking care of you
The way paramedics do for broken people,
Gently.
Somehow you survived
But that train took a part of you with it.
Every morning is the same,
8 AM
Suspended in time between the tracks
Staring down fate
Daring yourself to move
Because for some reason,
In your mind,
That train still hasn’t hit you yet
And today
Is another chance
To get out of the way.

-A letter to myself from the other side