I swear that my feet are on the ground
It presses heavily against me,
As I bear the weight of myself.
My mistakes and anxieties are heavy.

Yet, despite the clench of gravity ‘round my gut,
I am unfocused and cannot breathe,
Plagued by curdling insecurity.
My eyes catch the sky and I gasp.

Where the ground impresses itself upon me
With an unsurmountable finality,
The watercolor canvas above me stretches
In a graceful arc.

It is a beacon stronger than any god and,
Is it nature? People, after all
Weren’t meant to fly.
Or we’d have been given wings.

As surely as my feet are on the ground,
I have no wings. Yet,
As the wind holds me like a lover,
I feel it should catch.

I stand with my feet flat and rock to my toes,
Feeling myself tense in readiness of flight.
As gravity has always been my master,
The taste of freedom is too familiar.

At the top of some, of any, precipice I balance
Not on brick or metal or glass,
But on my faithlessness in gravity to do as gravity does,
And provide some consequence to my hubris.

The starlit sky has me star-crossed in love, as does its daytime brother.
For all that my hubris has bounds,
And eventually I remember I too am bound,
I still wonder if I’m not some foolish Romeo.

If the hot drip of wax on my skin and the bite of the sea
Is the burden of my love, or if in consideration of my forewarning,
I must bear more, I still want
The sun to paint me rich gold.

Painted behind my eyelids is my fall from grace. Or to grace?
From stifled hell to weightlessness.
And this must be what people mean,
When they tell me about a place called Heaven.

I stand on the ground and look up, for I know
That my imagination is not so vivid
As to grant that sight any justice.
And I know too that there is no justice done when I dream of falling.

Gilded clouds smudge the arc above me, and I see cherubs napping.
Wispy white crowns giving depth to the deep blue.
A robin’s egg mottled in ruddy, warm colors.
I haven’t ever wanted so much as when I see the sky.

So while my feet are firmly pressed into dirt,
And, god, do I feel the brunt of it.
It’s undeniable that I breathe
And long for the clouds ‘round my head