Falling Now

There's nothing to break our fall.

Dear goddess, why is there nothing

to break our fall? Who are these people?

I don't know them, nor the gray soccer mom

mobile I'm currently strapped in.

I don't look at them. They don't matter. Not when I'm

Bursting through white cotton-candy clouds

Fluffy vapor the backdrop of death

Rugged earth zooms toward us faster.

Fast forwarded evergreens on our lefts

and our rights. The tires of the Jeep crash

into the earth, the shock of it sending my stomach

into my throat. The scent of pine overwhelms as

we propel down the earthy terrain. There's a pain

in my thigh. It's from my own nails digging into the flesh.

Mud splatters like blood against the windshield.

Zooming now, the cliffdrop, like a razor's edge to my wrist

But, before we reach it, the earth shatters like a plate

slipping from the hands of a clumsy child

Roots, mud, worms and the far glow of magma

Wait? Why is it shifting? Turning sideways?

Physics says I should fall vertical.

Pieces of jagged gray rock shoot out sideways

from the lopsided chasm

Can't I die like a normal person?

There's music now. That's inappropriate.

Right in my ear. I shut my eyes against

the oncoming molten death only to open them

Now I'm staring at my dream catcher, black

and feathery with it's pretty jeweled web

hanging on my bedroom wall as my cellphone blasts its alarm.

You had one job, Dream catcher.

Twenty bucks wasted.