Do I love you because I am melancholy?
Is it simply due to hours expended
that I am expectant,
waiting, entitled in my way,
and you oblivious, or else unwilling—
the cliff ahead we face yet you
are turned away, blind to the abyss—

But I, in all my fatalism,
am ready to jump, and
seeking death, can look ahead
cross-canyon, to faroff potential picturesque spires
and valleys of golden swaying calm,
but also down,
straight down.

And whose perspective here is wrong?
—The anticipatory and the blind.
Maybe this vertiginous feeling I’ve mislabeled love
occurs only because you stand beside me cliffside,
but there’s more: our separate long and strange familiar journeys,
individual bodies bending space in countless separations,
embodied entities seeking solace in shared spaces—
maturation of slow fruit.

Has it in truth, then, led us to this chasm?
Or is it merely me,
ever-woeful me,
who stops to tarry on a depthful new perspective?

When I emerge again from the reverie,
the view shifts upwards—realism—
taking in all things.
Do I still feel the urge
to go canyoneering with no rope?
To leave you looking down at me before I fall,
to let you watch me turn into a corpse?
For then my eyes,
confined within my quickly fading body,
would fall upon you finally
with the look of what could’ve been,
pallid perspective of pure beauty—
and see you as the one who could have been my love—
but it would kill me,
necessarily,
to see it so.

And then, the last image
to float before my quickly dimming eyes would be
of you
in shock, bewilderment and pity,
regarding me, the fallen,
in my tragically beautiful moment of martyrdom;
but stupid, so stupid,
and such a waste.

When I avert my gaze
from grim realities that may have come to pass;
when I raise my eyes aloft and let
the dreams of death and falling fall away,
the color starts returning to the world,
and you,
my friend,
stand once again beside me.

I’ll never know just what inspires you to stay,
you who are constantly looking towards something else;
I’ll never know how much you read
into the darkest caverns of my mind;
if that’s the very thing that makes you stick around,
or if it’s just me, after all, who stays looking at you,
because I’m fixated—I’m a fixater—I’m fixed—
But either way, I’m happy.
Happy to have you here,
to make you laugh and watch you smile,
and talk about the sun when it is shining bright and warm,
but seldom else.

I wonder if this thing is real.
I wonder if the passing of the times
will lead us once again to fairer lands,
away from here, this temporary precipice.
In the meantime I will stop myself from looking down,
at least for long,
and savor all this gaiety and charm.
I’ll overlook where we now stand,
and all the distant places we could go,
at least for me,
at least for now—

perched.