Falling

• Ashleigh Cummings, Grade 11
• Poetry
• 2009

The world is on fire.
And I'm falling.
It must be very silent, they say,
To fall.
The world must be on mute.

They're wrong.
I'm the one without volume.
But I hear it all.
Everything
Falling from love.

It's a circus outside.
Innocently sexual,
Barbarically playful.
They're hungry, I know.
They want each other,
They want to squeeze
Everything they can get their hands on
Into the pores of their skin.

Ravenous animals,
Violently rotting each other away
And wanting more.
Wanting more.
They scream through the mahogany walls
As if they were made of ghost.
And the muddy, damp breath
Whispers
"I'm here, I'm here."

The feathery tension of being trapped,
The bitterness of being safe
From those who have fallen,
From those who I could save.
But I, too, am falling from sanity,
Attempting to grasp onto
The wisps of concrete echoing by.

But let me fall.
Don't save me.
I have chosen.