Jump

I was a child who could fly,
a wisp of bone on the wind.
Dreams delivered me into the clouds,
weightless above the loneliness of
coming in last and failing to be beautiful.

I was a teenager caught on a spark of emptiness,
a witness to lives picked apart by disease.
Nightmares crept under my skin
and altered the rhythm of my pulse,
as I watched the memory of laughter
sink into the ground in a bruised casket.

I was 21 and stumbling into catastrophe,
a rage of self-destruction in combat boots.
Nights without sleep led me into the arms
of strangers who fed me lies and shots of whiskey,
elixir for mastering the art of forgetting.

I was 32 and going blind,
chosen at random by a mutation passed
like a dirty secret through the blood.
Darkness crept quietly behind my eyes,
slowly giving me the courage to see.

I was 41, a character in a love story
I believed would never be written.
Comfort soothed the ache of decades
spent searching for fragments of myself,
chipped away by the teeth of loss and grief.

Jump

I stepped across a threshold of fear,
closed my eyes, took his hand, and jumped.
I was finally home.