Breach
Split in the sidewalk like a highway to Hades.
Hairline fracture turns gaping maw before the first spike of adrenaline strikes the heart. Both of my arms conduct invisible orchestras as a fight for balance ensues. Best not slip into the beckoning abyss. Only a fool tumbles in, the best of us know that the only righteous way to accept ill fate is with one final swan dive, the last of the heroics a doomed soul has to offer.
The chasm grows wider as if a tectonic axe is hacking away at the very plates under our feet as a love I held close mere moments ago now stands on an opposing cliffside as confused and dumbstruck as I am at our hellish predicament.
I look down into the endlessly hungry darkness.
Don’t look down. Never look down.
When you work up the nerve to stare past the toothless gums of Grandfather Time, your eyes can’t help but fixate on two things: the aching nostalgia of your past encapsulated within the dribbles of drool creeping their way down the throat of an elder’s memory, and the eternally vacant void of your future, ever-patient to swallow you whole when you take your Great Leap and be filled with the rewards of a risk life.
The magnetism is too great. Look away from the horrors of forgotten time and the incessant call to oblivion. Keep your eyes on the beating heart that breaches the expanding gap before you and tunnel your vision. You know the choice is coming, to jump with the best or be lumped with the rest. You can see them waving to you, shrinking by the minute. The longer you wait, the faster your desperation will turn from a well-intentioned strategy into spoiled action: the stench of regret.
There are only two directions, and a decision must be made.
Accept the split as your new reality, turn about face, and walk solemnly away from the unreal magic of a meaningful life, or back away from the cliffside of others expectations so you can get your footing, make your break, and hurdle the unknown towards the beacon of light illuminating the one way forward.
You can feel the rumble of the quaking Earth as your decision becomes more difficult by the second. The gap will only widen until the love you longed for is but another speck among horizon dust. If you’re going to act, act now, and act true.
You dig your foot into the trembling dirt and perspire with the salty fortitude of an honest man’s grit. You can see the watery eyes of an unintentionally wayward woman glistening in the heat of the Godflame as she stands silent on the other side of impossible fate and improbable feat.
You tense your muscles and steady your hand as the aim of the righteous guides your intention.
You run.
And you jump.
.
.
.
