A thousand feet in the air over the parking lot, she let go and flew next to me. "Stop falling," she said, tutting at my flailing. "It is that simple."
"How?" I yelled, frustrated that the professor could not see I was about to die, smeared against the pavement below. "Stop playing around. This is real life."
"Wrong," she said, and kissed my lips again. "Rules are a lie. Lose them."
The force of her lesson pushed me to try. Closing my eyes, I thought of having wings and soaring high. Once I mastered the truth, we sat on the edge of a cliff and spoke of dreams. "Professor," I asked, "why have we come here?"
I touched her hand, and in horror felt that it was cold.
Since then, I came to see that there was no good answer. Back in the island city where I once belonged, I thought of lies lived, fears learned—lost at the side of a cliff, over a steep drop in the desert. From then on, I was free. Or so I thought, til I looked into the eyes of the false god and saw nothing.
YOU ARE READING
XENE
Poetry"Rules are a lie. Lose them." Xᴇɴᴇ is an experimental miniature literary magazine. PDF: sunriseoath.wordpress.com/xene-zine
