Take Heart

Every day teeters on the brink of a chasm, I forget it is there and stumble when I attempt to be dancing. The fall is so long, so dark every time, I've climbed up that well so many times and still I doubt I'll make it again. So much for relying on experience.

Early in the morning, before the heat licks the city immobile, the riverside is busy. The promise of a new day, a few minutes of peace, Beach Body 2021 (in case we have beaches, or bodies, then), I went for a run without thought, tried to reduce myself to only these muscles, only these steps in front of each other. I keep trying to put one metaphorical foot in front of the other too, but I seem perpetually perched on this moving walkway in the wrong direction. I seem perpetually dragged to inertia, and never safe from the bottom rocks at the end. Just hours ago, was I not smiling, convinced I'd unearthed hitherto unseen secrets and now how these secrets dilute themselves in tears along my skin? I look at lifelines and know I cannot call them, know I couldn't tell the truth if they picked up, Oh no I just wanted to say hello. The dog paces around my door, smelling despair, but she's easily distracted by smoke screens, and haven't I spent a lifetime perfecting those? Would you like a treat?

This is the part of the story where the writer neatly ties the endings together, expertly crafts a lesson and maybe leaves you with a wink, or a smile, or a warm feeling in your chest like everything is going to be alright and isn't life a marvel after all.

But maybe I'm not a writer. Maybe I'm just a collection of jagged edges and recurring chasms, sprinkled with loose promises and strings of words. Maybe the ends are too frayed to hold this weight
in.