The Abyss

By Adrija Mishra

  We stand in a queue,
 On a cliff,
 The cliff that leads to an abyss.
 One after the other, we jump down the cliff.
 Five seconds after the fall,
 Everyone grows wings and flies across,
 Soaring in the sky.
 
 It was my chance now.
 I stood on the ledge, looking down,
 Feeling an intangible pull
 Towards what lay over there.
 I, too, jumped and waited for five seconds,
 Then ten, then thirty,
 And then for God knows how long,
 But I didn’t grow wings.
 I couldn’t bring myself to fly like others did.
 
 So I went deep into the bottomless chasm
 Of uncertainty and risk
 And made a gamble with fate.
 I don’t know how long it took,
 But I reached a ground
 That was deliberately soft,
 As if designed to help me survive
 The impact of the fall.
 
 Standing on my own two feet now felt surreal.
 
 Looking around,
 I saw a world
 That was unknown yet known.
 It comprised everything
 That we used to dream of
 When we used to stand in the long queue.
 
 I walked down a path in the greens
 That looked like
 It hadn’t been walked on for months.
 Soon, I saw a beautiful civilisation of my own.
 In awe, I ran closer but halted
 When I noticed that, like me,
 They, too, didn’t possess scarred backs
 Or the hideous wings,
 That the others did possess.
 
 They found me.
 Sparkling with excitement, they rushed
 And welcomed me with open arms.
 For the first time,
 I tasted the sweetness of life and felt alive.
 I asked them all the whys, the hows, the whens,
 And they answered my questions so meticulously
 It felt as if I’d been there all along.
 
 The tale of my people is pernicious.
 It turns out, that due to the qualms,
 People fished for alternatives to survive the cliff;
 For jumping off the cliff was one such inevitability.
 So they chopped off the wings of birds
 That used to be our guides on this journey to our home
 And used them to escape the reality that they couldn’t face.
 
 They chose to mutilate
 Themselves and others
 Because of a momentary gain,
 Because they dreaded
 What the darkness and depth held.
 The lack of courage, spirit, and mettle
 Led to the rack and ruin
 Of so many,
 Including our own.
 
 But all that
 We, the courageous, could do
 Was to watch them as they flew around the sky aimlessly,
 Wandering away from where they truly belonged,
 Becoming more distant
 From what was meant to be a happy ending.
 For they didn’t have the fortitude and belief
 That they could survive the fall.