A Second Chance To Be The Light
Alive,
but,
just barely.
Holding on to fading dreams
As the body decays
I focus on the pain
Just to make sure
I am barely still here.
I am dangling out the window of a skyscraper,
holding on by a thin thread.
It’s slowly breaking,
slowly sending me to make friends with gravity,
and then eventually,
the pavement below.
A hijacked plane starts to head towards the tower.
I have the best view to watch it collide with me
and with the tower.
Then the thread breaks,
and I become one with gravity.
Falling from the building,
towards my inevitable death.
Visions flash before my eyes,
not my whole life,
like they like to say,
no,
these visions are of what I could’ve been,
if my fading dreams weren’t drowning underneath the wheel.
I see everything I could of been,
everything I should’ve been.
I see all my failed relationships,
all the women I could’ve loved.
I see the moments when fear held me back.
I see it so clearly,
all in a flash that feels like a lifetime.
I could’ve been a light
but instead
I was a dull glow,
like a candle right before it takes its last breath,
flickering,
gasping for breath,
fighting against the darkness.
As I am falling to my death,
moments before the lights go out forever,
I look up to the sun for the last time.
The giant glowing ball of life
splits into two.
I know I must be lost in my visions again.
I stare at the two suns,
wondering what this vision means,
when the second sun starts heading right at me!
I hear the plane approaching,
I hear the people screaming,
I hear the wind in my ears,
as gravity does to me,
what it did the apple
that fell on Newton’s head.
All the while,
the second sun keeps coming at me!
The light gets brighter and brighter,
the heat is almost unbearable,
I am trapped in a ray of light!
I close my eyes as the sun meets my flesh,
waiting for death.
Before I can hit the street,
the light from the second sun absorbs me
and plops me down in a field outside the city.
I sit there on my ass,
dumbfounded.
I reach down to earth
and my hands feel grass.
I feel the warmth from the sun on my cheeks
and the wind gently blowing through my hair.
I take a breath and look up to the sky.
I see the one sun,
the glowing ball of life,
that has always been there.
The second one was gone.
Had I imagined it??
What the hell had happened??
I try to make sense of it all
as I sit there in the grass.
It’s unexplainable!
Has someone drugged me??
Was I still me?
I didn’t know.
I took another breath
and tried to stop thinking
and start feeling.
The sun
The grass
The wind
The birds chirping
all feel new to me,
like I never had felt them before.
I slowly stand up
and I realize that
For the first time
in years,
I feel
alive,
truly alive.
-C.H.