Free Fall

FREE FALL

(THE SECOND RAPPEL FROM THE KAMPO UNO TOWER)

Knees bent, hand sore

Sunglasses perched

Atop my top

Desperate to fall

He wanted me to

Fly

Faster

Higher

Like the sweat

Dripping

From my forehead

To plop meters down

On someone’s

Head.

 

To repeat what’s been

Done is easy:

He grins.

His hand on my chest

Knees locking against

Mine

I struggle

Wanting

Wanting

To be free

But unable to budge

Stretching my legs

Into tower’s air

 

His hand brushing my shorts

His big

Rope

Around me

Trying

Almost succeeding

Its vastness could not

Wrap its

Entirety

Around my bosom

 

To fly or to fall

To fall or to free

Myself it is –

All the red shirts, my student-teachers, his co-workers inside the tower of no answers, all in crimson blood surrounding me, surrounding fear, all in mockery of my cry for help

 

For freedom?

In the skies

They roam

They who have first fallen

They whom he made fall

Or for the glimpse

Of the top of the ladder

To root

Oneself to ground

In shame

 

Nearer and nearer

He makes me fall

Him with his red shirt

Him with all the other red shirts

A hand to push

Another to grip

Cords upon cords

Of laceration

Upon my wrists, upon my thighs, upon my legs, my arms, my girth, my hips, my ears

 

All red shirts encouraging me, encouraging trust

Not for myself, oh, no

But on him

He who has done it all

 

Just one more time and they say

I never have to do it again, again

To pass the class

Suck it up

I survived the first fall

With a broken smile

Why shan’t I go again?

 

Why?

 

Why?

 

I must be crazy!

 

I close my eyes

And