Such heights

The consequence of being light on one’s feet is that you are at the mercy of the wind. I ride on the wings of a storm, dancing high among clouds of cotton white — though I am no stranger to the rain. To the hail and sleet. Heaven is only as great as the hell below and I am an autumn leaf; my color an orange spark, caught on twilight gold. I rise and fall with hands stained in baby blues, my toes made black by the soil and rot.

There is a deep insecurity that wounds my soul, a bruise of wet colors like gasoline. I bleed fuel with a match in hand, dreaming of wild fires and the dances they play, the smell of ash and new beginnings like water poured on cracked earth; my heart a desert against the face of the sun.

But I enjoy these moments when the world constricts, naval gaze all the way back to the beginning, see the boy I had abandoned long ago. I savor the grip of my arms, claustrophobic comfort as I sharpen the edges of my haven, paper-cuts a small price to pay for the warmth of a cabin buried in snow.

There are no sacrifices of kindness for one who is alone. I rage until the logs are black. I seethe until I sweat the ocean. My cure is the deep greed of self-love, the spider lines to grace my ego elegant. With a brush I glue the pieces together where no one can see or hear my muttering.

I love myself so I can leave myself, letting go and sailing high above treetops, to feel and to hurt again with a smile of one who knows: this is joy, a most reckless joy of the living. And from such heights of my mortal throne I laugh in the face of the wind wherever I may go.