Jump

I press between
the weight of day and push of night;
a quilt of skin sewn sinew to bone.

Scars trace my surface,
map the past in keloid and curve;
I rub but cannot scatter the years.

A girl once drew her palm
down my laddered back, not asking
what raised the rungs beneath her touch;
lucky, she said, to know where the ledge stops-

the falling off is to know where it begins.