Don’t Climb too High*
They say
And don’t use the dead branches

It is a challenge to test how high she can go
Where to step
To make no mistake
Go faster and faster
And she can feel the adrenaline pounding in her ears
And the fear rising and the power building
The coming closer and closer to the sky

Till it is so close she could almost reach up and touch it.

And it would be smooth and soft like the icing of a cake
And the clouds would smear
Like messy cotton ***** or cream in coffee
They would leave white stains on her fingers
And she would be able to tell her friends tomorrow
I smudged the sky yesterday.

But to touch the sky is one of those things
That isn’t suppose to happen
Because before she can come close
The silence is split by a crack so sharp
She can feel its vibrations pulsing her insides
And her heart jutting into her throat
And there is a moment of panic

And she remembers what it was to play with the ocean.
And she decided to try something new
And see what happens
What happens when the tide can do what ever it wants with her
So she doesn’t duck or hold on or swim any faster
She relaxes every muscle till she could almost be asleep
And what the waves do is
Rip and pull so violently
She is thrown from side to side like a piece of dough
Torn to pieces
And in this moment she realizes
why some people die in the ocean.
And then all at once
Her delicate body is slammed into the sand and

This deep fish bowl of a memory is shattered
As she hits the ground.
And she realizes
why some people die falling out of trees.

There is two kinds of pain.
One that aches and drags
And one that shocks you with its ferocity and comes on so quickly
you think maybe all you did was blink to miss it
and she is hit with the second so hard
it does more then just knock the wind out of her
It steals the scream that tried to slip out of her open mouth
So there is this cold deafening silence

It leaves a memory so thick and scarring
It digs a hole for itself deep into her gut
And it wrenches her muscles to relive
It taught its lesson the hard way

She will never forget.

When it feels safe enough to open her eyes
She sees dark frayed pieces of dead ebony
And the echoing of the warning repeats
She sees what mistake she has made
To confuse life with death
And only one will support her
As she climbs higher and higher

Broken branches are broken bones.