I have an hour before I launch—
before the air becomes stiff and tight around me, and I forget how to move and breathe.
In this place, I like to say that I am ready to understand myself and the world better.
I take a step forward and the muse takes me away.
I write. I feel alive.
The momentum is a sweeping sound of gods cleaning the floor.
There are options:
you can cling onto the shaft of giant wheat and watch the trash beneath you stir in the breeze or
you can try to stand your ground and hold onto something heavier than yourself.
You can stare that god in the face and stick your tongue out — wet, red, and serpent-like
— deny them power.
You can also hide yourself in a dark basement sneaking a peek out the recessed windows—waiting for the sun to shine.

The land spreads out —-and out—-
but in there you are safe.

You can grab the wheat and climb—you can climb so high as to emerge in their alchemist lab, where they stir in viruses and coax men off cliffs with with the smell of lust and the song of sirens. Where they make girls spin—heady with wisteria, dancing like melted silver.
You can stand tiny amongst the glass beakers and cauldrons
and begin your monkey-wrench plan—breaking test tubes and extinguishing the flames beneath this cream of chaos.

In all these choices — which is the one that can give us the most control?
Is control what we seek or is it just the ability to withstand and come out unscathed?
I climb a mountain again—hoping I will be able to descend.
Hoping I will live to climb another.