Learning to Ski in Midlife

My first time on skis everything

looks like Half Dome or Everest.

If you want to fly you need wings, don’t you?

I keep thinking about

how Jung says we are

protagonists in our own lives

and an extra in a larger drama.

I’m terrified; no one cares. I’m an

exclamation point, they are a comma.

The last thing broken in me

was my heart. And it wasn’t a hairline

fracture. It was the Humpty Dumpty

divorce. But whose isn’t? That man

swaying through the snow like a dance,

that woman floating down the mountain

like a kite…someone broke their hearts—

or will. Yet they don’t stand still.

They explode like robust angels

claiming souls. When the lift swoops

me up, my feet dangle into nothingness.

I am ready to wing it, this abyss.

Author: Kate Evans

Editor: Renée Picard

Image: via the author