A striped kite
Stunted and stark in the deep sea
The wind’s wringing of the string
Pulling like church bells.
Summoning me towards
Its somber service.

From across a cosmic divide,
A splash of stripes
In an unknown maw
Ever shrinking, plunging
Higher in that strange sky.
That bright speck and I
Were once the same size.

I felt the distance
of infinity
Looming above me
In the perfect darkness
I saw myself there
Twisted and drifting,
In the sea of mortality.

Real fear reared inside of me,
The white moons of my
Knuckles tightening
I sank below the blackness
And the rising siren
Of my own screams.

And even when I brought that kite to finite ground,
I could not stop the sense that I
Had lost something profound