With bumps and bruises we fall from the tall trees whose branches we clang to with hard boyish fists and ragged knees. On the ground we stand gasping, and if we are small we yell: Mom, if we are older we stand for a while, touching our face, whipped by branches, touching the knees, scraped by knots, and one of us yells, I’m ok, how about you? and one of us yells to go beat up the third, for he was the one who said it would hold.

With bumps and bruises we fall from the tall trees that we climbed with daring imagination and drunken eyes, staring straight through the crowns and into the sky. We stand with dizzy heads and beating hearts, leaning against the tree trying to think. How the fall was swift, and how long was the climb, all of our youth it took. But time passes fast, down here as well, the dizzying sun spots are gone from our eyes now, our heads are getting clearer, we still lean against the tree but dare not look up. Around us people walk by, no one saw us fall. Oh wait, there, a man watching us with cold eyes. He leaves, he is busy, and where he was we see a girl now, in profile, she must have stood watching too, there’s still something about her face like an overbearing smile, finally turned away as she walks off as well. Then behind her is another girl, she is all pale, wiping her eyes, and when we look at her she smiles, terrified, but comforting.

And we all walk our separate ways from those trees. One goes to men with serious eyes, asks for a job, a loan, a small life. Some go to the girl that turned her back, she for whom they climbed, she who got them down with a few cold words. Maybe she will care for them more down here on the ground, feel sorry for the shaky voices and general flayedness, perhaps she’ll extend a small, firm hand, a hard earthly hand after that great devouring of blue skies under the heavens.

And someone will go to the girl who smiled through tears, hoping she saw how at least there was some greatness to the screeching fall from the towering peaks of boyish hope.