On the knife-edge of the world,
a man stands with a book,
pages trembling like wings
against the wind’s indifferent blade.
The city below is a slow river
of steel and glass,
its pulse a distant murmur
beneath his soles.
He is not falling.
He is reading.
Each word a tether,
each sentence a rung
in a ladder no one else can see.
The sun, a coin dropped
into the slot of the horizon,
spills gold across his shoulders—
a momentary crown
for a king of vertigo.
Look:
the book is open to a page
where the ink has begun to bleed,
as if the story itself
is sweating fear.
He turns it anyway,
thumb steady,
eyes lowered to the small black letters
that spell out how to live
when the ground is a rumor
and the sky is a promise
you might not keep.
In the reflection of the glass tower,
another man stands beside him—
same beard, same shirt,
but this one is already falling,
mouth open in a silent O,
book tumbling like a broken bird.
The real man does not look up.
He knows the difference
between a mirror and a warning.
Somewhere, a child
looks out a window
and thinks:
*That man is brave.*
Somewhere, a mother
closes the curtains
and thinks:
*That man is mad.*
Both are right.
Courage and madness
share the same thin ledge.
He reads:
*“The fall is not the end;
it is the space between
the question and the answer.”*
He closes the book.
The wind flips the pages shut
like a door slamming
in an empty house.
He steps back.
Not because he is afraid,
but because the story
has reached its period.
The city exhales.
The sun sinks.
And the man—
still breathing,
still whole—
walks away from the edge
with the weight of a thousand unwritten lines
pressed between his palms.
a man stands with a book,
pages trembling like wings
against the wind’s indifferent blade.
The city below is a slow river
of steel and glass,
its pulse a distant murmur
beneath his soles.
He is not falling.
He is reading.
Each word a tether,
each sentence a rung
in a ladder no one else can see.
The sun, a coin dropped
into the slot of the horizon,
spills gold across his shoulders—
a momentary crown
for a king of vertigo.
Look:
the book is open to a page
where the ink has begun to bleed,
as if the story itself
is sweating fear.
He turns it anyway,
thumb steady,
eyes lowered to the small black letters
that spell out how to live
when the ground is a rumor
and the sky is a promise
you might not keep.
In the reflection of the glass tower,
another man stands beside him—
same beard, same shirt,
but this one is already falling,
mouth open in a silent O,
book tumbling like a broken bird.
The real man does not look up.
He knows the difference
between a mirror and a warning.
Somewhere, a child
looks out a window
and thinks:
*That man is brave.*
Somewhere, a mother
closes the curtains
and thinks:
*That man is mad.*
Both are right.
Courage and madness
share the same thin ledge.
He reads:
*“The fall is not the end;
it is the space between
the question and the answer.”*
He closes the book.
The wind flips the pages shut
like a door slamming
in an empty house.
He steps back.
Not because he is afraid,
but because the story
has reached its period.
The city exhales.
The sun sinks.
And the man—
still breathing,
still whole—
walks away from the edge
with the weight of a thousand unwritten lines
pressed between his palms.
