falling continuously

falling continuously
you carry an education on your back
we, on the other hand, prefer to dance
a little above you, on pins

Reports kept coming: you were sad, you were normal, you hardly existed. The parts of your story fell to pieces. We started repeating ourselves, the dark rhythmic conspiracy in which we say we are trapped. The many ways of continuing and this one great distress are after all indistinguishable. Broken acres of violence - that's all this world is.

Weather! Not that it's going to rain. Forecasters are calling unanimously for a sunny, hot day. Not that a new war is breaking out in some place we know only through newspaper accounts and tales of allegiance. Besides, these tragedies do not yet return to us here. But the breeze disturbs something from years ago, pale sand at the eastern edge of the city, feverish trees vibrating.

Have you ever noticed the mythical city Calandria around us unspoken and clear as a bell? We are flash points on a continuum extending from our heads straight up trillions of years to our feet. Some station ahead finds all phenomena familiar, if somewhat dangerous, but don't hold your breath. It is still some way further on.

(It was one of those places where, if you had light thoughts, you floated, and if you had heavy thoughts, you stayed on the ground. Do you know I believed this true of our world for the longest time? And the only thing my friends could see in it was something patently, unforgivably literal!)

A new land opened before us, for the curtains of sleep had parted like two continents, revealing the groundlessness of our despair to us again in almost histrionic relief.

This bright corner of weather and the patience to have it, for which I envy you - that and your easy appearance, that noted generosity with utterly private meanings, the conjectured persona. I wished it, well, well. I wished it well.