After Telling You the Story of How I Fell Off the Waterfall

What with the moss being all smooth and wet
I probably didn’t stand a chance,
but I took it anyway
and lost
not just my footing
and fell
not to my death
but something unimaginably close.

You asked me if I still had nightmares.
I lied when I said no.
But they are slippery too,
like petals
or soft like tattooed skin.
The gentle unfolding of vision
blurring the edges of streetlamps
haunted and milky
the wispy sound of houseflies sleeping.
They taste like roots pulled too soon from their beds

like the inside of his hand that day
when he hung on to me and that rock
against the pull of gravity and the neediness of water
for just a fraction of a second
and then…