The Gravity of It

i.
i met a house painter on the street today
who said to me, step slowly, fall gently,
and when you do, do not get up.

ii.
i think you know. you must, right?
that when i lie down, it's like waking up in reverse, where the feeling
of crashing back to earth in the instant the light
hits my pupils is squeezed into a splinter
of a second, and i hang in the cold steam
of night, suspended, just barely, above my sheets.
i want to let myself splatter, you know i do, i can see it
when i close my eyes, but the tension props me up like a stand
long after my thoughts no longer attempt blankness.

iii.
the feeling is of being pulped. the fear is of being forgotten.
what we get when we get what we deserve is each other.

iv.
i sit in the corner of my bed, and reach out
my hands towards the words tumbling
out of you, your body folded into a pocket across the room.
when you leave, we will return to ourselves,
run through the accusations in our mind, the hideous
truths we dare not let manifest
into compressions of air leaving our lips.
ok then, we say instead, let us you and i stop being alone.