Falling, Flying

1. I’m through the heavy door and across the rooftop.
2. I step to the ledge.
3. Don’t look down, I tell myself.
4. It’s a long way down.
5. A woman’s voice, mellifluous in song, sounds and resounds against a backdrop of traffic and laughter.
6. Flowers bloom, crimson, pink, and gold.
7. A warm spring breeze wafts pollen and sunlight over me.
8. My eyes water. I rub them.
9. My nose itches, and I try not to sneeze.
10. Don’t look down, I say.
11. Through bleary eyes, it’s a long, blurry way down.
12. I itch my nose. I can feel it coming.
13. Atchoo!
14. I teeter along the ledge. I’ve never been sure-footed.
15. As a kid in gymnastics class, I always fell off the balance beam.
16. I probably shouldn’t be out here in the first place.
17. Unless falling is the point.
18. The breeze douses me in another wave of pollen. I hack and rub my eyes.
19. No sneeze.
20. No problem.
21. Except I can feel another one coming on. I swallow a couple times, purse my lips, then squeeze my nostrils together.  I tug at my nose as if trying to milk out the itch.
22. Does the sneeze throw me off-balance? It’s difficult to say.
23. Especially when I feel my legs load, then extend.
24. Whatever the case, I lose the ledge and launch out into the liquid blue sky.
25. You’d think I’d hurtle like a cannonball through birdsong and traffic clatter to the asphalt below.
26. So would I.
27. Hence, I suppose, my scream.
28. Or is it a cry? A whoop?  A holler?
29. I sound my barbaric yawp over the rooftops of the world.
30. Except I’ve descended so quickly that I’m no longer above any roofs.
31. I gaze through open windows.
32. A rumpled guy watching a ballgame.
33. A girl practicing cello.
34. A young woman dancing around in the buff.
35. But then, about halfway into my freefall, something catches. Not like the stretch of rope or give of net.  It’s gentler, softer.
36. Soon, without any more effort than a lazy, underwater swim, I’m moving through the air.
37. Horizontally, at first.
38. But then, with a quick readjustment, vertically.
39. And now in any direction I please.
40. Swallows barely miss me. Geese honk in dismay.  A crow gives me the stinkeye.
41. I’m not supposed to be up here.
42. Even I know that.
43. But up here, I am. Not part of the plan, such that it might have been.
44. I should make the most of it.
45. After a few near-misses (street lights, tree branches, balconies), I perfect my technique, stabilizing myself with outstretched airplane arms, propelling myself with subtle ankle kicks. I work on turns, ascents, descents.  I even hazard some fancy flying, barrel rolls and loop-de-loops and the like.
46. It’s like one of those flying dreams I used to have.
47. Only better.
48. I’ve heard they mean we feel happy and free.
49. Hard to believe that was ever my state of mind.
50. Which might explain what I was doing up on that roof in the first place.
51. But no matter. That’s all in the past.  Yesterday’s news.
52. I read somewhere that the past is never dead, it’s not even past. That never made any sense to me.
53. Now I swoop past a murmuration of starlings, hundreds of birds flocking this way and that, forming and reforming mutable organic shapes. They don’t seem to notice me.
54. Hanging from one balcony after the next, feeders at which tiny iridescent hummingbirds hover, whistling as they jockey for space.
55. I pull a long, sweeping turn toward the river.
56. Ducks quack, splashing and preening.
57. A pair of dragonflies hovers above the surface.
58. Along the waterfront, cherry blossoms explode.
59. As I cannon beneath one bridge after another, I sense something in the dark spaces. I slow down to investigate.  Tucked back in the crevices, hanging from the trusses:  bats!
60. One cocks a yellow eye my direction.
61. It gives me the heebie-jeebies, so I rocket away on the warm spring breeze.
62. The pollen’s so thick at times, I have to squint to see. I could use some goggles, the kind skydivers wear.
63. My eyes itch and water. I try to rub them, but the effort messes with my in-flight stability.  I lose control for a moment, zigging and zagging, left and right, up and down.  It’s a wonder I don’t smash into a street lamp or billboard.
64. I get myself righted, but it’s hard to see.
65. So I gain altitude, hoping to steer clear of any obstacles—and possibly the concentration of springtime pollen.
66. Above me, a helicopter thwacks, easing onto its rooftop landing pad.
67. Talk about a barbaric yawp.
68. I try to cover my ears but end up in freefall. I drop ten yards in the time it takes to stretch my arms out again.
69. It makes me wonder: What happens if I get tired?
70. Will it be possible to land somewhere and take a break?
71. Not even birds fly forever.
72. My nose starts to itch again. I know better than to rub it with one hand or the other, so I wrench my neck and get at it with my shoulder.  It works, sort of.
73. But not for long.
74. It wells up suddenly.
75. The sneeze, I mean.
76. ATCHOO!
77. Now I’m back where I began, plummeting through the liquid blue sky from the rooftops of the world.
78. Or the ledge of the roof of my building.
79. Sounding my barbaric yawp.
80. Though it’s more of a scream. A shriek.  A squeal.
81. Which must just be instinct. Wasn’t this, now, the point all along?  Isn’t that why I shouldered through that heavy door and strode across the roof in the first place?
82. Anyway, my yawp.
83. The pavement screams up at me.
84. Blackout.
85. Silence.
86. It doesn’t last long.
87. Sirens wail. Feathers rustle, and wings flap.
88. A crowd gathers, watching as paramedics assess the situation and police cordon off the area. They shut down the entire block, streetcar be damned.
89. I move in and ask a woman what happened.
90. No answer.
91. I try again.
92. Before she can respond, some guy, forty-something, rumpled, asks the same question.
93. Someone jumped, she says in a mellifluous voice.
94. That’s not strictly accurate, I say.
95. Would you listen to that? says the rumpled guy.
96. Beautiful, isn’t it?
97. Nothing says spring like birdsong.
98. And flowers.
99. All that pollen. The guy sneezes into his wrinkled sleeve.  Sorry, allergies.
100. Hey, I say, I feel your pain.
101. Any idea what kind it is? asks the woman.
102. Well, he says, it’s not a crow.
103. She laughs. No, nor a hummingbird.
104. Not a duck or a mallard.
105. Doesn’t look like a goose.
106. Starlings fly in those big groups, right?
107. Murmurations.
108. That’s it.
109. Maybe a swallow? she hazards.
110. Could be.
111. This whole time, I’ve got my head on a swivel, craning my neck, trying to catch a glimpse of the bird they’re speculating about.
112. Now it’s acting like an owl, he says.
113. That’s no owl.
114. Don’t bats do that thing with their necks, too?
115. Not that I’m aware. And I don’t think bats have feathers.
116. True.
117. When I can’t handle any more of their speculation, I take off.
118. Sunshine warms the blue air.
119. Along the river, a pair of dragonflies hovers at the water’s edge.
120. I glide over and greet them both—chomp, chomp—then sail away.
121. The past is never dead, I think as I drift on an updraft.
122. It’s not even past.

J.T. TOWNLEY has published in Harvard Review, Kenyon Review, The Threepenny Review, and many other magazines and journals.  His stories have been nominated for the Pushcart Prize (five times) and the Best of the Net Award.  He holds an MFA in Creative Writing from the University of British Columbia, an MPhil in English from Oxford University, and a PhD in Sociology of Higher Education from University College London, and he directs the Master of Arts in Interdisciplinary Studies program at Oregon State University.  To learn more, visit jttownley.com.

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