Twelve Years and a Ten-Foot Fall

 

Twelve Years and a Ten-Foot Fall

The fall, I no longer remember.  Not one still image remains

in brain from the actual act. 

Upon hitting the ground,

I awoke to colors;

 

the red and yellow of Ronald McDonald's house -
because it was.  Pain flooded everything. 

It was as if gravity had left only me. 
The world caved in

 

as my crowd of observers watched

distant enough to feel removed

but close enough

to feel. 

 

I looked over to find the source of the burn

and found my left arm a jigsaw piece. 

It resembled the old z-shaped

car-jacks car-makers put

in early model SUV's; 

 

it resembled the piece in Tetris

that never seemed to have
a mate.  After awhile,

a new phase of pain

took over. 

My ears began to ache, mostly due to

the sound of my own screams.  I asked

for forgiveness and in a moment

of extreme vulnerability
I saw God. 

 

I decided in that moment, but not

in many after it, that He did
exist. 

 

As the stretcher slid underneath

the rubber tubes and plastic walls,

a silence came over me
like none I've heard since.

 

Pain went away and with its exit

came the arrival of

peace. 

Joyous tears replaced
fearful ones, for there
was nothing to be

afraid of. 

Holding hands with mother and father,
the wheels of the stretcher

doing my leg's work,

I realized they had nothing left

to offer me. 

 

I left my childhood behind

on that playground floor.  I was drugged

to safety and smiled at the ambulance rooftop

with my newly developed threshold for life's worst. 

It took only twelve years and a ten-foot fall.