Find yourself a cliff to swan-dive off of. Somewhere picturesque like the coast of Maine or Ireland. Look down at the water, so much like terrified horses, one hundred feet below where you stand. Feel the wind as it pulls your hair, throws it into your soft, blue eyes. Stormy. Night time. On the edge of this cliff you've made for yourself, with a Surgeon General's warning printed in ten-foot tall letters, black like death, and thus, ignored. Isn't erosion a beautiful thing? The waves eat at the letters of the government-mandated label, warning against use by pregnant women or while driving. The wind blows over the limit of 0.08. Find your cliff and jump, arms outstretched, reaching for the sky that is the sea because you are upside down, with perfect posture. Find your cliff and hurl yourself from it like a rag doll. You never have been able to dive well. Pell mell, racing for the knife's edge where the open-space free-fall consumes everything, each memory and prized, forgotten possessions, and photographs of cats that you chereished, then lost. Yes, find your cliff and jump if you want.
My tongue can only say so much, and my teeth are utterly useless. My fingers can not hold this hand any longer, and it is time for you to jump or not. Wait, what am I saying? You have jumped, and I am just now catching up to the reality, looking over the edge of your cliff, the taste of last night's beer festering in my mouth like the corpse of the awful evening. I am speaking to a dead woman, as she lives those last sceonds before the frightened horses devour her. White stallions, angry and scared. Angry and scared, just like you. Or me for that matter. I am yelling to deaf ears. Over the roar of the ocean, you would not hear me anyway.
My only hope lies within iron skin and bitter determination that I drink like raspberry *****, in the bathroom, taking shots like it's the only thing that can save me. Determination that singes the tongue and releases flames in the stomach. Pure resiliance and dumb luck, for I have seen the depths of that ocean, and know just what monsters dwell there. They have heads like vultures and the teeth of hyenas. They are called monkeys, because they cling to your back as you sink down into the black, where the floor of the ocean is not a floor at all, but a giant mouth full of razors, fire, and sweet oblivion. I felt the fire once, and fought these "monkeys" all the way to the surface, being birthed out of the water with my hair knotted and my eyes filled with horror, stubble on my chin. I have seen the waters you are heading for, but you can still grow wings. There's always that. The "monkeys" are leaping from the water like great whales of despair, or the flying fish in that old Mario game. Biting at the open air only feet below you now, but you can not see them, becuase even though you are falling, you still believe that you are running, and you can't stop looking over your shoulder to try and see the thing that chases you. Your eyes see nothing though. I stand atop the cliff, watching you fall through the rain, writing this poem in blood over the ******* warning label, and you can not see me. You imagined your persuer and now see him everywhere except the only place he really lives, inside your mirror.
It is with a tear and a final drop of blood that I turn from the cliff, and arrest your motion in my mind, taking a photograph just before you passed out of sight, so I can remember what you looked like before breaking the water's already unstable surface. I hear the jaws of "monkeys" snap, but I saw nothing, so nothing happened. Denial. I walk away as the tear falls from my chin where it has rolled down to, mixing with the blood of the poem, which has extended beyond the warning label all the way to where I stand now. I close my eyes for one, long moment, remembering what I knew and what I thought I knew, and what I now know that I did not know.I take one step. Another. Another. I am running from the scene of this death like it was my fault. But really I am simply scared.
If you can swim, swim for your life, friend. I can do nothing more, only be here when and if you make it out from under the surface alive.
I'll be sitting on this rock, under the lightning struck tree trunk that is split open in the middle, branching out in the most unnatural fashion. It looks like electricity itself. I will be sitting on this rock, chain-smoking, lighting the tip of one with the **** of the last, watching the edge of your personal cliff, waiting.
All I can say now is, "Good luck."
