FALLING — a fiction

It’s beautiful until you hit the ground.

There is a noise it makes as it rushes past. It fills my ears with its roar and makes me feel like I’m sad somehow. Maybe not sad; maybe like I’m missing something.

You make me feel cold in a way that beer cannot warm. Your crystalline tones and your rasping gutturals. I have listened to your voice and pressed 2 to save. My hand is now empty, open palmed before me. I wonder why it does that.

The ground tilts. My foot is stuck. It is still back there, playing against yours. Up, up, down, down, left, right. It is our cheat code. I only ever got it right in my head — never in real life. I flail, my arms hitting nothing and my legs cartwheeling against only themselves, never landing a single blow.

You have green eyes. There are specks of grey around their outside, like ice on the pond where I fell and was lifted out like a sack of kittens, your hands beneath my shoulders, your lips on my own.

The pavement is red from the tail lights. Brake lights? I can see the shadows between the stones as I zoom in. There are valleys down there. There are people and buildings and homes and people and homes and people left behind.

There will be scratches when I land. My hands are off, doing their own thing, like every other time I have found myself in trouble. My face will be hit. My chin will be worn to the bone, zombie-like. I will make it home, be brought inside, be laid in the bed. I imagine it to be much more glamorous. I always do.

But not yet. Not yet. Right now, I am falling. I relax and I glide. I spread my arms and I fly. I am falling. I am falling. I am falling.

Originally published on Tumblr

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