Dive

Us humans, we are so damn magical. We fall from the sky through clouds afloat on nylon bags, whooping and hollering, not pretending to be birds, no, but wild animals flying without wings.

Wait, let me start again. I'm sitting in the pool, and reading, something heavy about death and I'm tearing up, and there's this crack like if lightning had a small infant child, followed by the sound of a whoop. Then the storm continues, popping, crackling. High above me, people, fragile skeleton scaffolds held together by rubber bands and stretchy fabric, are unfurling giant swaths of nylon, and we're only here this once, so why not fall and catch yourself with a glorified sleeping bag?
There are clouds up there, too, impending light and larger sound, spinning fractals and growing exponentially at the edges, and the fallers float in and out of the haze, a dream of reality, and the've escaped real for a few short minutes as they free fall then slow.

One catches an eddy like when I'm in a river but different because this eddy spins, and my heart stops for a second. I wonder if time snapped our hearts together there for a moment, me from the safety of my backyard retreat, them from the unstable current of the atmosphere, a reminder that we fall apart, but fuck, we are still alive.