One-Thousand-and-One American Nights

Night #11.

I am falling through the atmosphere, burning like a meteor, crashing into the ocean off the shore of Manhattan, watching the Coast Guard flash up their lights for something--unidentified--out there. Mentally I am signing movie scripts, comic book contracts and action figure rights: The Man Who Fell From The Sky. She returns and we are wed. I wake. It's 3 a.m. Back to bed.

---

"Can you hear me now?
I'm waiting for any trace of you
In this dinghy on the dingy sea
Oh how I know you loved the sea

I know you're safe now.
Somewhere past the furthest star
But there's no buses to where you are
Where you are sleeping safe and warm

I hope you don't doubt me now.
I am faithful as the sun
Burning bright for the fruitless hope
of lighting all the world at once

You are a comet cast now
far from sight and out of sound
I hear your echo clear and loud
the siren call of you trailing out

---

I break the surface and breathe explosively. The atmosphere caves in slightly at the heavens, six miles up, in response to my eternal gasp. Barometers in Wisconsin read the change. I am affecting things, consciously, unconsciously. I breathe to bring you back, pulling against the vacuum of your grave, space. A burial at sea? A burial at sky. Hang me; hang my head among the stars.

---

When I die, send my rocket towards the sun
so I may become
something radiant like you.

Your eyes are telescopes 
sleep soundly out of view,

but some day you will open and
catch the shine I throw to you.

---

Climbing over the side of the boat they look at me in wonder, holding blankets and shotguns, both pointed blankly at my chest. They say nothing, stare and glance. Finally,

"How - how the hell did you survive that?"

"Yeah, and where did you fall from? A plane, a hang glider - what?"

Wet hair matted to my face, through blankets and through teeth, I smile, twenty degrees past the eyes of the man questioning.

"I jumped, from Sacramento."