--I'M ALMOST THERE

…Sometimes it’s hard to get out.
To get out of this hole, this trapdoor I’ve fell through.
Oh, sure, I can see the sun hanging up there in a crack through the wood splinters that caught on my pant leg when I fell through.
I can see it, but what to do about my predicament?
And I can see something shifting back and forth up there, probably limbs of a tree or maybe they’re shadows, kids jump roping or a panhandler rocking like a pendulum to keep time or keep from going mad, who knows?
Last night I dreamt I was stuck and then this morning when I woke I learned I really was stuck. The horror of it shocked me.
My dream was one of those awful black things that holds you close to its chest so that you have no choice but to take in the sour odor of its sweaty skin. But I thought to myself—Easy. Relax. It’s okay. When I wake up, I’ll get the real world back and this dream won’t have happened and I’ll feel stupid for being afraid, you silly scaredy cat.
Yet the dream-the nightmare-the thing that happened to me in the middle of night really was real, and so here I am now, wedged in a dark place surrounded by nothing but black space save for the freedom that’s up there, overhead, out of my reach, mockingly, berating me with all its regal, open-air liberty.
When you’re trapped like I am you have a lot of time to think about the things you’d do if you were free to roam wherever you wanted.
You make lists in your head. You think of people to thank, people to beg forgiveness from.
You write songs in your head and forget them five minutes later. Your fingernails get long and your whiskers curl into themselves and you probably start to smell a little, of course you do, let’s be honest about it, but it’s all right because no one notices, there’s no one else there, it’s just you in that pit after all.
You think about unsolvable riddles. With equal gusto, you think about perishing and living.
You realize there is a lot more you want to accomplish. You think: I could have been a better lover to my wife. I could have done this. I might have said that. I should have danced more.
After a while you start to hallucinate.
You’re thin and dizzy and light, almost a fracture of radiance itself, and so you send yourself in orbit, not fiercely so, but as if you’re a javelin some child has decided to chuck over a fence, and then you slither through those cracked floorboards that were once your ceiling, you go right though the trapdoor and out and you land on solid ground and there’s a big ass sun waiting for you, bloated and beautiful, arms at its side, hands on hips like an expectant mother. The sun shakes its head in mock disgust. She claps her hands. Breaks out grinning, says, “What took you so long?