The Scream
My toes peek over the edge
as pebbles slide down
with a grinding, scratchy thud.thud.thud.
They tumble away until I can’t see
or hear them anymore.
As if they were never there at all.
Like I might be — if I follow their trail.
My hand reaches over the edge
and casts a shadow along the jagged precipice
upon which I am rooted, refusing
to go completely over. Refusing to go over at all.
I scream — a guttural sort of sound:
The kind that clings to stomach lining
and sinks into its bubbling acid as the belly
tells the head it’s time to eat.
The belly feeds on fear.
The scream pushes past the stomach,
the liver and the winding intestines.
Each organ takes a piece of the scream,
and sends it onwards diminished and stripped
until it reaches the breath filled lungs -
what sweet release it is to find air!
And the lungs say “Go! Run!”
so the scream has strength to climb up
past the esophagus and through the vocal chords as they vibrate,
thinking they alone have produced the scream.
They have much to learn.
And there it is, strangely melodic as it echoes through the valley below,
dancing through the trees and grass and little towns and houses
and little people who never look up.
Could this be the day I find the courage, finally
to leap over body and soul
from this lonely patch of earth?
No. Not yet. Still I stand here, speechless and blind, listening
to the scream as it gallops away without me
like a dark horse of the night.
