it's something only felt in bones
scraped up shards split open
by three days' grace
and forty four days' solitude
when i'm picking up
pieces of my soul
shoving them into canvas
hastily snapping twigs to
build a new nest for the winter
i feel like a hawk on the edge of a cliff.

i could do it, you know
and i tell you that every time
i could fly if my wings weren't clipped
freshly broken-tipped
slicked with oil, with dirt
and the wrong kind of paint
and i'd fall
not like i did before
but fifty thousand feet above the ground.

a mid-air pirouette
trapeze artist over train tracks
salt-stained acrobat
swinging from the power lines
where the safety net was torn in the storm

but oh, for ten seconds of freedom
who cares about hitting rock bottom?