“Stand and Fall” Poem

It’s the strangest thing to feel your heart stop beating

Even just a pause
For just a moment
Before you tilt forward with your toes gripping the edge

But you’re already falling
Or you’ve been falling
And the passage of time is sluggish and disorienting

You don’t know when
You don’t know why
And there’s nothing to catch you as far as you can see

No ground below you
No walls around you
Just air or water or darkness or tears or blood or shadow

You’re falling in
You’re drowning in
You stand there on the edge and you fall in unison

Perpetual suspension
Perpetual motion
And then a beat echoes through the nothing and everything

And though you stand
And though you fall
Life goes on again with the beat of a heart