the tricks of bandages
A.H. Lewis
It’s like a free fall
and your marrow becomes wind and your eyes are parched,
but down isn’t a direction and up is a beating heart.
The hollow parts of your lungs where breath no longer hides:
the questions arise from there.
Did we jump? Was I pushed?
Midair, it matters little.
So many pretenses, now this one of flying.
How long is the fall? Where is the earth?
These are the tricks of bandages,
the sweet poison of empty philosophy
like a pacifier for newborn screams.
We have to be close, what else could there be?
Despite the view, it dawns:
we weren’t meant to fly.
I dare to peek our progress—
there is no stitch of ground; we cast no shadow.
But my, how far we’ve fallen.