Aubade With Burning City (No Exit)

' How something that lives only to fall can be nothing but sweet'
                   
                                                  - Ocean Vuong
          

Say exit, and I won't look down.
Say we will all fall together, laughing.
Say this is a dream that we will wake up from,
never intending this, never walking toward it.

Falling, falling
drifting like snow does in sideways patterns
with random destinations, unknown, unpredicted --
these are the remaining pieces of a way of life.

I was with you before all this
and in the wake of yesterday before it began to snow.
We never imagined how things could change
in instants of terror.

Everything fell in tiny droplets;
words, letters, minutiae,
it was like a grey Christmas except in reverse --
We fell, us.
The gifts stayed behind and burned into a cloud of dust

The streets are empty
and we are on the verge of something like a New Year.
We can rise like the dust of this city after it fell,
we can be as high as its wounded ghost
or a great falling star.

Be my night sky, I'll be yours; the backdrop to our playground.
It went silent after shrilly crying for everyone's mother
to return looking for us, for it,
not looking up as it met their bare skin.

Just hold my hand, don't look down.
I won't jump, if you will.

      .....