The Pull

...          Gravity gravity gravity.

I can feel something pulling at me, from below. I’m stuck to the ground, I always have to be touching it, touching something that is touching it. Have I ever been completely off the ground? I’ve never been on a plane…

It pulls and pulls and over the years I’ll sink more and more into it, it will pull me close, until I’m dying, so that it can whisper in my ear as I finally lay panting against the ground… what does it want to tell me? Why does it pull me.

I could lean down… and tell it not to pull me, not to force me. I’ll fall down eventually, when I’m tired. But it is a forceful and possessive lover; it will not let me go. We’re always touching, we’re always near; it’s constantly reminding me that it is there. And I just want to be left alone for a moment, one moment for me. I g o into the hallway. I slam the door behind me. It is still there. We are still sole to face. I go into the kitchen, open the fridge. It is there deciding with me, peering at the jars, mulling over the sealed plastic bags, humming at the vegetables in the crisper. I’m not hungry. It isn’t either. I sit on a bar stool, my feet leave the ground, and it panics, it’s pulling, it’s creeping up through the wooden legs, and I can feel the heaviness of my body with each breath. I step off the barstool and it sighs with relief and I can feel everything in me sink to my feet as it desperately pulls at me. It will never cease its pull. So I crumple into a pile on the carpet and let it caress me.