free fall

sometimes i am the ant & sometimes
i am the watermelon falling from
the top of an elevator building. 
you can get so small that the air doesn't
know what to do with you. you can
swell to the point where there is
no choice but to break. god i love
to come apart. i love to get my sugar
all over the floor. call someone i haven't
talked to in years on the highway with
miles to go. find a fresh way to live
below sea level in an apartment
where the windows fill with soil. where
bugs mistake the place for a burial. 
i try to explain, "no i am not dead yet
to the best of my knowledge." the bugs 
suggest, "maybe we could try."
i have a falling dream just like other people.
i appreciate that i never make contact,
instead i watch windows rush past
full of bibles & casseroles. i am not 
the kind of person who will ever go 
sky diving. i know how that goes. 
i drop vases & glasses & plates all the time.
the shards make continents on the floor.
i don't do it on purpose but the truth is
i do kind of like to look at things when
they're broken. i throw a watermelon 
in the yard for the chickens. 
the pink guts & the seeds like pale pupils. 
when i was little i made my whole family
do a fire drill. i was upset because my mom
wouldn't get us a trampoline so we could
practice jumping from the roof. i stayed up
all that night imagining how i could
leap from my bedroom window 
& be okay. i have been caught by so much. 
there feels like less & less though 
the older i get. i start putting trampolines 
all over the yard. you never know who might
fall from the sky. i could be me.
it could be a ghost. after a fresh rain the dirt
toils with worms & centipedes. 
an ant falls from the roof & lands safely.
i hold a mug above the kitchen floor & i 
don't drop it this time.