this temptation to step off the edge / and fall weightless, away from the world
                        —“For the Sake of Strangers” by Dorianne Laux

It makes me feel somehow better
when there’s a name for it—
arachnophobia, schadenfreude, sonder for example—
those feelings that sit at least two standard deviations
from the bell curve center of feelings where
angry, sad and happy live.

A man once told me about his compulsion to jump
when he comes close to the edge
of a building’s rooftop or balcony.
Call of the void, I said. It has a name.
He never jumps. Doesn’t even want to, really.
But his brain manufactures and entertains the notion
and then, there he is suddenly
falling away, away from safety and solidity
away from responsibility and obligation
away, away from the illusion of control

and there he is becoming
something beyond self
wholly alive in a pinpoint moment
wholly in the arms of gravity, pulling
at him like a hungry lover. And don’t we surrender ourselves in love?
In falling in love? In lovemaking?
Don’t we crave that moment
when we step past the lip of the high building
we have constructed for ourselves
and finally, falling
meet something truer?