Apocalyptic – Day Thirty of NaPoWriMo 2021

how do you convince someone

they’ll fall when they believe

that they’ll fly?

I’m standing on the ledge

and I can’t stop looking at my feet

I can’t stop looking at my feet

and counting and recounting

my toes trying to change the

narrative when the narrative is

clearly changing me

when you look down from the top

every elevation looks equally small

which is to say that

when you are at the top

everyone else is equally trivial

so they ask me to step down

step down and go home

I ask them, home as in the

cement and the red paint?

or home as in the feeling?

I’m standing on the ledge

convincing myself that stories never end just become irrelevant

I’m saying that people never end

just become irrelevant

and I tell them I want absolution

they ask me if I atone my sins,

would I be at peace?

and I tell them that

there’s no peace for sinners

only the hope for forgiveness

I’m standing on the ledge

saying that there are two

ways out of this and neither

involve falling

thinking how the end of the world

looks like a nine to five workday

thinking how I have been standing

on this ledge for only fifteen minutes

but I have spent twenty years living

on the edge

they say that I have my youth

I’m saying that all I have is youth!

all that I am is my youth

I’ll spend my youth

wishing to be immortal

and my senescence

waiting for death

so I tell them that

I imagine falling a lot

not falling like from the edge of

a roof or anything

falling like with my feet on the ground

falling like finding actual purpose

falling like I want this more than I want to live

I’m standing on the ledge

thinking if I go down

everyone goes down with me

Written by Anushka Das for MTTN 

Artwork by Yatra Vasa for MTTN 

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