Eyes wide open

We weren't sure what to do, in those last days. We made lists: those things we hadn't yet done, those things we had and wanted to do again. In the backs of notebooks, on receipts. It could have been a way of putting it off.

He took me to a place of his, in the deep heart of the earth. We reached it when the day had grown tall enough for shafts of light to probe the whiterock gully floor, where the river ran. He had timed it for that.

We leave our packs in the shade. A little further downstream, there is a round-shouldered boulder sunk deep in the way of the river. We stand at the top and watch sunlight dance on the surface of the dark pool below. I have a memory of a younger self letting fall a palmful of borrowed coins into a wishing pond, somewhere far away from here and many years ago. They caught the sun like that, flashing silver for a brilliant instant before winking out forever.

He used to jump from there, as a boy. He has told me this before, and now I stand on the rock and guess the length of the fall to the pool below. Too far. He is going to jump it today, I am not.

He turns back to get ready, but I don't move. And I think:

don't think.

The pull is so strong that I almost walk off the edge fully clothed. I am certain, in that moment, that if I pause I will remember I don't want to do it. I kick off shoes, t-shirt, trousers. Walk forward.

Now, I say to him. Now or I never will.

The edge is rounded, uncertain. I can feel it through my bare soles as I balance there. I am shaking.

He watches. I wait, breathing hard. Staring ahead into the dappled shade beyond the pool.

Six.

Seven.

Eight.

Long seconds unroll in the shafts of sunlight from high above. My leg muscles tense, but refuse to respond.

I tell myself: one instant of will is all it takes. After that it is too late. One instant-

I jump.

I fall.

And the world does not end.