Plunge

Every night this week,
I keep dreaming
that you throw me out
the open door of an airplane,
into 30,000 feet of blue —

You fling me out head first,
without altimeter or oxygen,
no tandem partner lashed to my back.
You cast me into solitude and blue,

not endless blue but ended blue,
a sharp-capped blue, a snapped-shut blue,
30,000 feet of blue and love
before the blue stops.

You cast me into solitude and love,
into 30,000 finite feet of your love.

This must be the weightlessness of your love.
This whirl into vapor, this vertigo.
A broad gasp of green looms up
to crack me open and I do not know
whether the stones in the ground,
whether the tiny houses, the lines of roads
are supposed to be a map to find you again
or just a picturesque countryside
to lull me down.

Is this the anxiety, the panic of your love?
Your love hammers the ribs in my chest;
your love is a scarcity of air, a burned lung —
a strained muscle, air pressure blowout–
I am trying to tell my body
we are all falling here at once
but some parts want to fall faster for you.

I cannot find the up of your love.
I am all turned around, I am whirled
head over heels over head
over heels over head
and there’s no way up,
no way down but down, but gravity
into slashes of blue and slashes of green
that circle and blur and whirl.
I am whirled; I am a world of your love,
a dead weight blackout of love,
a terminal velocity, a body dropped of love.

Every night this week,
I snap to wake as body breaks ground,
your name the cord of a parachute
clenched white-knuckle tight,
never snatched.

— Adam Kamerer


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This poem was originally published under the pen name Gabriel Gadfly.
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