Fear of Falling

Of all my myriad fears, real and imagined, the worst has always been losing you. And yet, I stand upon the edge of a precipice and I tremble at the chasm that splits the earth between us. For all my vaunted words, I have nothing to say. Nothing right, at any rate. Nothing to bridge that canyon and bring you back to me. Perhaps, finally, I have nothing left to offer you. It's been said that I could talk anyone into love with me, but maybe that, like all the warmest things, is only temporary. Perhaps I'm more magician than anything, casting my illusions until I've no energy left to maintain them and they fall away like dissipated smoke and shattered mirrors.

I feel something, some way, but I can't say with any certainty what it might be. I'm jealous, to be certain. Jealous of myself, or my past self. He, at least, felt less like the jagged egde of something meant only for slicing, shedding blood, destroying. He knew what it felt like to build something with these hands.

My hands are harder now. Once, I touched everyone as a lover. Now, the only sincerity I feel in touching another is the sincere desire to crush between my fingers what might, one day, be powerful enough to wound me. The only pleasure I feel in a touch is the knowing that, before long, it will be over.

Revulsion rises in my throat. Hot, acidic, burning away the lining until bile and bits of flesh spell into my mouth, catch in my teeth, and become trapped there. Never expelled, just filled to the cusp. Nausea blossoms like horrid orchids in my esophagus, chokes my larynx, fills my lungs, and nothing ever comes out.

I fill my guts with poison and I'm thankful the gods allow me at least that reprieve. I've never sought substance as a crutch, but I'd rather have the crutch than face anything more on my own two feet. My legs, I find, are tired of standing.

Perhaps I'll drown. That, I think, would be a suitably archaic way to go. I've always figured the day I found the best way to die would be the day I actually died. The only question, then, was which came first, the finding or the dying? I nearly drowned once, as a child, and since then I have reserved both a fascination and a terror of it. Odd, now, that the things I hold most dear have been swept out of my hands and I am left treading in something deeper, more sinister, than any water man has ever laid eyes on.

I feel like shards of porcelain just held together by a thin layer of flesh. No muscle or sinew. The bones, porcelain, and the organs too. All of it crushed to sharp little needles and held in place more by habit and force of will than anything else. My bowels are lined with bits of glass. I, myself, am a mass of convulsions, smatterings of agony here and there, shifting with each step.

I've tried to find comfort in rage. That has always been a sanctuary from this. No matter what other feeling wound its way into me, rage was always my solace. The one thing capable of burning away everything else and leaving me...blank, if not precisely cleansed. But there is none to be had. No comfort and no rage left in me. That old well has finally, perhaps permenantly, run dry.

All the loves and lovers I have left behind will say, have said, that they were the ones that broke me, but I wonder if I ever let them close enough to put that kind of knife in me. Some days, I wish I knew myself half as well as I think I do. There are parts of a man that, once broken, can never be as they were. Old flames and romances will claim to be the Great Destroyer, but I think they flatter themselves. Anything with that kind of potential would have to be cast aside before it grew. Doing otherwise would be suicide,right?

And yet, here we are. Opposite sides of this chasm. I'm curious how it makes you feel, whether you even notice that the passage of time has ripped me so far away from you. Or do the phantoms of me that I've left behind suffice? Am I better in memory or in reality?

Am I even dear enough to command that sort of rememberance?

There is something to be said about one-sided affections. Unfortunately, I'm not interested in thinking about it, much less saying it.

What if I just jumped? If this is all a metaphor, then I should be able to leap this fucking chasm and land beside you, where I belong. What's the worst that could happen?

Fear is for the weak.

Alone,
-S.R.