Even though it’s natural, the talking heads have made nature the enemy.

It’s an unseen hand reaching out to us through the air. Once its fingers find their way to your neck, it will choke your breathing until you gasp and grasp for air.

So we look at each other wearily from distances of 6 feet and eat our Big Macs with blue latex gloves.

My future is dashed. Over. From here it is a pale wall of ash I can’t see past.

I’m not young enough to fool myself into thinking there is more time.

I know the end is there. Ahead. (My joints remind me with twinges of pain every time i sit in one place too long.)

My 12 year-old at bedtime has more wisdom about it than me.

“Dad,” he says as he waves his hands at the furniture in the room. “It’s not this stuff that matters.”

He puts his fingers on my chest. “It’s this.”

Still, I worry my worries and worry some more.

I’ve been up and down the steps. Regrets should be shadow that I shed in the noon sun.

They lurk anyway and gather power in my restless sleep.

I’ll never make it, they whisper. You’ve ruined everything.

I’m fearful when I should be fearless. Turning back when I should be leaping forward.

There is no tomorrow. The judgement of others is invisible and invented. Uncontrollable in any case.

The panic in the eyes of every stranger makes a strange forest of thorns where uneasy dreams murmur and squeak all night long from the corners of my mind.

I care too much about what’s been. What could’ve been.

I have to jump.

I have to.

This time I won’t turn back from the open hatch in the plane where we lean into the wind and look down at the boiling earth below with wide eyes.

1, 2, 3….

Where is the parachute? There is no parachute.