Fall, falling:
Like a one-year-old with her hands
Curled up in fists around mommy's Index fingers
That couldn't yet guide her,
Like the scar on your knee
From your first bike ride without Training wheels
And daddy broke his promise that He would never let go...

Like the leaves that dry and curl
Into fetuses
And dive back to their roots
When the wind rips them off their feet
To the absence of trampolines

Fall, falling
Falling, fall

Going back to school:
"Teacher, when I grow up
I'm going to be an ar-ki-tekt...!"

It seems like all I want to do Nowadays is build cities:

Cardboard cities,
Hiding memories in boxes
So that they are taped shut
From light
And shifted away from their Birthplace
Until they don't know what is home
?

Textbook cities,
Made from the ashes of trees
With red marked essays
And empty blanks;
This city reflects my ugliness
With the windowpanes of every building.

Puddle cities,
Dark stains on my bedsheets
Beside my pillowcase
At two, three, four in the morning
After waking up from a dream
Of beautiful flashbacks -
Now they are dead.

I wander through cities
Because they know my woes.

In the morning,
I slip out of my pajamas
And into the safety of my hoodie.
I change.

This is not fall anymore!
This is not the absence of a trampoline,
This is the presence of a trampoline.
This is the presence of a grass-lined green sky.
Nobody cares about gravity anymore,
Nobody cares about falling!

If i were an opposum
Hanging from a tree with my tail,
If i were a little girl
Dangling by my legs off the monkey bars,
The leaves don't fall,
They rise to kiss the green sky.

They prepared for this all summer;
I prepared for this all summer:
At the end of the fireflies,
I stood in a circle marked by candle flames
Of some of the most beautiful people in the world -
I made a wish as I blew mine out.

Three months later,
I sat in the cafe, listening to your personal sufferings,
Seeing, for the first time, with my myopic eyes:

I am one of the luckiest alive

My stomach never growls
Because she sees food on the table every night.
My house is a four-bedroom grace
In the quietest rockaway suburbs.
It has heat but has never burned down.
My heart beats, my lungs breathe
Through each night of sleep.
I only break wishbones;
I only visit the hospital when a baby is born.
All my grandparents are ailing but still alive.
I have never been raped.
I do not suffer from depression or psychosis.
The only things i take from bottles are vitamins and tylenol;

I have never felt the need to take my life from a bottle.

Daddy has never abused me;
He teaches me how to balance on my two feet
And takes me hiking at the del water gap.
Mommy has never neglected me;
She hugs me goodnight and always tries to take time
To listen to my piano playing.

Sometimes, Mommy and Daddy argue,
But they love each other,
And i have a feeling they always will.

I have one of the highest averages at my school.
My mirror and I get along -
I tell her, "I love you, and I'm proud of you."
I bury myself in books, journals, word documents, sheet music, pokemon, stuffed penguins, and food...
I can draw, sometimes...

I can play piano for the people I love.

I have learned to love,
I have learned to break,
And when I get lost in my cities,
The people I love pull me off the streets.

I am happy.

I.
I, I, I,
Me, my, I -
You.
I love you, so

My job is not to fall,
My job is to rise.
This is not "fall",
This is the season "rise"!

My job is not to draw cities into journals
But laughter into you, into three-dimensional mouths -
Through pokemon, stuffed penguins, and food;
To take the starving, the homeless, the cold, the diseased, the cancer victim, the handicapped, the fatherless, the motherless, the abused, the neglected, the divorced, the rape victim, the depressed, the suicidal, the challenged, the self-conscious -
(That's a lot of people!)
To take them all and embrace them
and tell them a joke,
To take them all to toys 'r us
but not buy a single thing,
To sit them down on my piano bench
and read them Shel Silverstein:

"There once was a tree
and she loved a little boy."

Little boy, be brave!
To age, to move, to stress, to break
Is not to die!

Little girl, be brave!
Hold your mommy tight on nights
When daddy gets short-tempered:
The same way she held you
After you stumbled learning to walk.
Hold your daddy tight on nights
He gets short-tempered:
The same way he held you
After you scraped your knee from your bike fall.

Rise, rising
Rising, rise!

Little girl, little boy:
Go jump on that trampoline -
You are two of the luckiest children alive!

Be brave, Cindy!
Tell your tear ducts to embrace a coma,
You are not falling,
You read children's books
So you have a greater potential to grow.
You are rising!

A night at the cafe
Was a gift from the candle flames.

Be brave, cindy,
Tell your tear ducts
That unless you're crying because you're lucky
Because you're crying for someone else
They need to embrace a coma.
It doesn't seem like they will ever have
A reason to cry for themselves...

A night at the cafe
Taught me how to
Hang like an oppossum from the monkey bars
And shout:
"Mr. green sky, I'm ready to grow up, now!"

Rising.