Stepping forward, I curl my toes over the edge.
Gazing down, I breathe in the expanse that lay before me.
Limitless – almost frightening because there is no end.
I feel it calling deep within my being.
I hear it in my blood.
The peak of my inhale.
The void of my exhale.
It lives. It breathes. It bleeds.
In my dream, I lean farther forward and fall.
The rushing wind encompassing my body
With a million tiny fingers holding me tight.
I feel safe in this embrace and close my eyes.
Oh, what a lover the wind is…
Awake, I recoil at the limitless expanse before me.
It's too big, too large for words and thus too much to take.
I am so tiny compared to this world of worlds out there;
It will consume me, no questions asked.
Better to thrive in a limited existence
then to perish among greatness never attained.
So around I go, placing my back to the eager wind
and the edge of imminent destruction
And into the warmth that now lay before me.
Ah, my familiar friend, your rays soothe my soul
as my mother's soft hands did so long ago.
If only you could sing me to sleep,
into a dream of sweet possibilities.
I could soar through that rushing wind
with my arms outstretched as wide as my smile
surrendering to the invisible currents of afar.
I could reach peaks so incredibly vast
where even the clouds bowed below
and the warmth of mother sun is so strong
that I would never again go hungry for song.
Instead I lay stranded in this purgatorial wasteland
Afraid of what's right and discontent with what's left.
Which would be fine if what's right here and right now
was even near to the perfection I crave.
Ha, perfection, what a sweetly packaged lie
Served on a platter plated with gold, made from mold
And crafted with tears from countless, unfounded but treacherous fears
driving even the insane to redefine the limits of insanity, it's crazy
how something that does not exist can drive us so mad.
You know what's also crazy?
Standing here with my arms outstretched as wide
as my mesmerized, sunburned and dehydrated eyes.
What does this stagnation prove?
What do I gain from this over exposure of familiar muck
besides a cancerous vocabulary and an ill-fated mind?
No, this warmth is best felt on the move.
Running, jumping, dancing through trees
and high-fiving leaves with my face
focused fiercely forward towards
that limitless expanse
I so fervently feared before.
Well, these idled hands
have had enough twiddling thumbs for this lifetime.
They were made, instead, to soar beyond
the greatest and most distant horizon ever seen.
It is time I set aside this melancholic diatribe
and rise from these two dimensional sewers.
I do not thrive on a sheet of paper
constricted to one direction or the other
void of the peripheral magnitude that actual life affords.
I am a 3D, no 4D, no Unlimited-D Being
And I will settle for NO leash.
So around I go, placing my back to
this victim-clad paradigm of "I can't" and "they won't"
(I've should enough on myself for one day)
and into the rushing wind that now lay before me once again.
A smile creeps upon my face as I realize the
Eager wind that was once my foe is not taunting me
But cheering me on, promising the secret of everlasting flight.
With the warmth caressing my now sun-kissed back,
I step forward and curl my toes over the edge.
Gazing out, in all directions at once,
I breathe in the unlimited expanse unfolding before me,
Outstretch my arms even wider than my smile,
And I Fall.
- BPW
