The Drop


© 2018 Katherine Williams
"The Drop" appears
in Porter Gulch Review 36

.

Hauling me out
to the take-off zone,
one arm is lost
in the stunning cold,
the other poised to plunge.
Out of the grey expanse
emerges my leviathan.
Bathed in adrenalin,
I claw my way into
its murky green magnitude.
Standing weightless
and fluid, I rip a gash
down the face of time.
I nearly make the drop—
fall into the face—
but something’s not right.
I’ve been held under
but not like this:
I never felt so turbulent,
then still.
The bottom-dwellers
want me home,
but I don’t go well.
My burning lungs
flood with cold—
then with surrender,
easing me back in
to the Afterlife.
My bleached-out hair,
like my blueing fingers,
drifts with the current.
The last of my oxygen
flares up to the light.
My final thought:
I made it.