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You stand three feet away.
I feel the distance like a chasm.
My heart smolders,
seared with an imploding pain.

It’s like a bottomless
black hole
consuming all life,
all hope,
all light.

Harm has been done.
Sometimes three feet
is an impossible distance.

Deep down
inside the hole in my chest,
I hold hard to the edge.

My arms stretch,
I feel my shoulders open
like a long, slow downward dog.

As my neck arches against the pull,
I see my post-menopausal stomach flat and taught.

I know the only way out is through—
to release my grip.
To become the darkness,
allow it to overtake me.

Three feet is a long way to fall.

On the other side of darkness
is an ungraspable light,
freely given and always available.

It is a light that says,
“You will not die from feeling.
But you must feel it all.”

But feeling is painful,
not harm,
an aptitude of these bodies.

Your body knows
when trust is broken.

Three feet is a long way. Listen to your body.

I release my grip and
cry out.

It’s a desperate screech,
softening
as
I
fall
toward an immovable boundary.

I am engulfed by darkness and
in awe of the force of gravity.

Compressed,
where pressure meets the edge.
It buckles and releases.

My feet are on the ground again.
I am the opposite of crushed.

Pain dissipates.
My body tingles.
Alive.
My eyes are moist.

I see you.
Three feet away.

I am sorry.
Soft as a breeze, you open.

I take one step.
Then another.
Two blends into one.