Flying Over Broken Ground

I am afraid of this
weightless feeling your words and sound and touch
give me
I am afraid of this
all-consuming lift of my soul that you have managed
with a just a few short days

you have flown me higher than I would have thought possible
and I can see the ground clearly below me
and I am so scared to land back down there

what would you think of me on the ground
the world that I can reign over with my heavy heart and heavy hand?
while I fly among your clouds, you cannot see the dirt that sticks under my fingernails
or the grime that coats my limbs
if I were to fall, would you go down to retrieve me?
if you saw me in my natural state
of crawling and dragging my way towards an end that is murky and changeable
would you leave your air-travel to join me in the under-belly?

and you say you already live there
but my mind is a place that few will ever find
and be glad they never will
for the hell that man creates for man
is nothing to what woman can create for herself

while my heart soars this night and the six past
I can feel the weights that you have managed to work around
subtly tugging at my seams
reminders of where I really do belong
will your arms follow me there as well?
will your protection last the journey inside my head?

my earth is shattered, the pieces strewn haphazardly across my landscape
only your insistence that I float with you, unspoken and compelling
above the life I normally live
keeps me from stumbling and tripping and falling
as I normally do

how can you manage to coax out wings I never knew I had?
you can take on the broken land around me and lift me above
you cannot change my perspective
but when you speak to me I find it all possible to bear
and while the sights haven’t changed I feel an ease in passing over
that my clumsy self would never have managed on her own

how dangerous is it to feel that you have found your missing piece
and it is in someone else?
how perilous to finally understand that not all comes from within
and know that you could lose the one thing that makes you whole?

for I’ve never been one to draw from the outside to fix what’s within
and I’ve never been one to rest on a shoulder not my own
but your shoulders let me go while keeping me up

and I will never understand what you see in me so high up here
and I am sure that on the ground you won’t see me at all
I will never understand why you picked me up in the first place
but when you drop me at home
and the ground rises to meet me with it’s abysmal arms opening wide in welcome
I’m certain you haven’t looked at my abode
or else you’d never take me for another ride

do you see the landmarks strewn carelessly across this body?
do you see the markers of destruction, like ruins of a war always lost?
do you see beyond the depth of my eyes into
the stark bleakness of the room where I sit
always waiting for the patient to recover?

behind the good you so covet and need to protect
can you not see the pain that mars everything I touch?

you would not be the one to tarnish me, my dear
my unshed tears alone would rust all that steel you have in your spine
and the ones that linger beyond my barriers
would extinguish your fire and melt your ice
leaving you to pool with the rest of the puddles left
of those who thought before
that I was good enough to be saved
that they were strong enough to save me

because, for all your muscles, your ability to carry me above this treacherous ground
I still don’t know whether you’d be able to walk it with me

see, I test too, but my assessments have more disastrous consequences if you fail.

I should know.
I was the first to fail them.