One day I want to go base jumping.
I think it would be like dying.
And I want to feel dying,
I want to feel the scream of air past my ears,
the howl jerked from my gut,
the tears spilling out behind me in pearl strands.

I want to feel falling like suicide,
like wind slicing open my wrists,
like my tongue sticking to frozen metal,
I want to leave all of my broken behind like the skin of my tongue on that pole,
come away bleeding and with my mouth agape.

I want my jaw to drop at every small miracle,
I want to sing the words to every song I know,
and when I run out of words I want to sing my own song
with lyrics I don’t understand;
I want every broken soul crying below me to hear my screaming creature song
and feel a bursting inside like hope.

I want to fall like an overdose,
like filling my mouth with enough pills to suck the moisture from my teeth,
like chewing every last bite into bitter white chalk,
like tasting my own death on its way in;
I want to take a bite of death when I fall.

I want to fall like bad poetry,
like a panic attack,
like razor blades in my skin.

I want to fall like an ocean so loud I can’t see,
like showing my scars,
like coughing up seawater and little green fish,
I want to fall like a thunderstorm and a broken heart,
I want to fall like a supernova.

When I fall,
the explosion will burst above my head in brilliant yellow silk,
because I want to fall like suicide
until I feel the breath freeze in my lungs,
and my fingers brush the edges of stars,
and the overeager rocks rush up to meet me
until I feel how much I want to live.

And I will pull the parachute’s rip cord,
curling under the eggshell dome of my hope,
until my knees fold to the ground and my palms grind into dirt and my teeth clack together,

and I will land howling.