Shards of Sanity

She stood alone at the top of the mountain, surrounded by a sea of bleached snow. Strings of evergreens lined the periphery of her sight, burrowing deep into the horizon. Falling, always falling, an incessant curtain of white.

The boundaries of direct-less space canvassed her sensory experience. Her mind was clear, empty of fear and hope, moving in stillness, at one with the icy precipitous vastness. At once she pushed forth, her body entrusted to the pull of gravity.

Downward. Sliding. Faster and faster. A solitary sail against the wind. One thought, her only point of reference ahead: nothing matters. She accelerated. Ten miles, twenty, thirty, forty, fifty, fifty-three, fifty-six miles per hour. Her body — a disintegrating flash of light.

When you plummet disoriented into the abyss… are you floating?

 

Related article: Unfaithful

Straitjacketed

People|Fred Mount Photography

Ice. Caught in fall, mid-air.

Hear me rage.

Ignoble fates, tracing the hatred raw,

Relentless on the page.

Yours is the pause,

The question bled upon the edge.

Mine – final push

To purge all off the ledge.

 

Once noble hands

My deepest knowledge clawed.

Of serpent tongues

Unyielding rave applaud

Where torture found a way

To be refined,

Splitting my soul in two,

It dredged my mind.

    

In madness lost

I watch the crown’s power

And paint its tragic hold

Upon the hour.

Hear the heartbeat drum

And shatter silence

A bard of old – stirred up

In crippled violence.