3 weeks, driving constantly. 1 week left. Miles compile. Traffic is blood pressure. Passenger seat sleep is surface level dreaming and a Bottomless Pit. There are no other cars at night but ours:

Falling

I wake up falling
I’m in a bed but falling
A small clear ball filled
With fireflies
Floats above my head

Others are falling too

I see round clear plexiglass rooms
And planter boxes
People and angled structures
All falling

The firefly filled spheres
Are for as far as I can see
Above and below

Everyone and everything is falling
No one seems alarmed

* * * * * * * * * *

Bottomless

I used to imagine
Falling
In a bottomless pit
A society of falling people

If it was truly bottomless
They’d fall forever

Weightless

I imagined the edge of the cliff
At surface level
Where families and cities of people
Waited to jump with all their belongings
As a center, a place where

People congregated
To enter, throwing
Their whole lives over the edge

Beds with mahogany headboards, ovens
Showers, fireplaces, lamps, and desks
Exercise equipment, pianos
Acre size plots of soil

Rooms arranged as they were before
Upright, but falling
Everything arranged but falling
What would you need to fall forever?

* * * * * * * * * *

Big Hole

People wait years for the chance to jump
Pilgrimage to Big Hole

The pit is a mile wide by a mile wide

One jump a year

One hundred people

To jump starts over
Foregoes
Surface level life
Is over
To jump is to end
And never land

* * * * * * * *

Society of Fallers

Spend their surface level lives
Preparing

Each with duties

Once falling it's a
Vertical existence

Falling fire
Water
Falling farm
Waste
Sewage
Gardens
Builders
Making water
Cellular science
Application of
Molecular manipulation

Bottomless Pit as
New myth

* * * * * * * * * * *

Once Falling

Always falling
Once the decision is made
To jump
To become a faller
There's no going back
No falling back
To the surface

* * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * *

For New Fallers, Things are Less Arranged

As you move down to jumps that have been falling longer
There is more organization

Living in the fall

Schools and maze sports
Cylinder reed instruments
Wind harnessing
Turbine energy source

There is no sun in the pit
Source of light is phosphorous
The lightning bugs

Relic fallers raise them

* * * * * * * * * * *

New Breed of Lightning Bug Bred

Fed enzymes and sugar water
Brighter tail light

Millions of them
Gathered and kept in glass like orbs 30 feet wide

Order of calmly halcyon firefly keepers - monkish
Phosphor Monks
Devoted to the phosphor

Sacred luminous creatures

Massive globes of insect emission
Fallers gather
Around their sun

Light - consecrated

* * * * * * * * * * *

Phosphor Faller Monks

By bloodline
Surface life spent
Learning the insects
Phylum Lampyridae
Coleoptera

Luminous monasteries
Keeping the colonies
Tending to their every need
Getting ready
For the fall
Worshiping the glandular
Chemical reaction
Of the photophores
The glow

* * * * * * * * * *

Oxidizable

Is the organic molecule luciferin

And

The enzyme luciferase

Chemical reaction makes light

Inside the firefly

* * * * * * * * * * * * * *

Bioluminescent Scent Sends

Be with them, the bugs
Let them land on you
Cover every inch of you
Feel their little feet
On your skin

* * * * * * * * * * *

Speeding Down

Downward, tear
Tearing air
Terminal velocities
Faster here isn't fast

Dream ahead
Down to one
Of the first falls
Falling fifty years

Slow elders and their fireflies
Telekinetic
Telepathic
At their one
Dust

* * * * * * * * *

Wording the Words Well

Said the pen
To the bottomless inkwell
If we fall
And don't land
Is that falling?

* * * * * * * * * *

Movement

Moving from place to place
Within a fall is a task
There are guide ropes, rigid

The constant wind is a problem
Huge plates are situated in places
As windshields
Areas free of wind are sought after

Round wood rooms
Graphite structures
Non breaking

* * * * * * * * *

Edge Guards

Guard the edge of the pit
Getting too close
To the side of the cliff wall
While falling
Means a death
Glass breaks, limbs lost
Debris spray
Things could spin out of control

The pit wall is one thing feared
The worse thing that could happen
For an orb of fireflies to crash

* * * * * * * * * * *

In Jump 239

Lightning bugs acquire
The strain of a virus
They become diseased
Go mad
Become killers

The one most sacred thing
Producing light and love
Turns and attacks

* * * * * * * * * *

The Story

Of the faller that wishes
He wasn't there anymore
Longs for the surface life
Lives in regret
Never should have jumped
What can he do?
Absolutely nothing
Must attain acceptance

* * * * * * * * * * * * * *

What Does the Phosphorous Glow

Look like?
100 people floating
Around a 30 ft wide
Sphere of fireflies

* * * * * * * * *

Pit Wall

Ominous
Fast rising
Blur of teeth
Something to stay
Away from

* * * * * * * * * * * * *

There is Drift

Within the Pit
Safer toward the center
Larger objects
House propulsion
That automatically fires
If too close
To the pit wall

Self monitoring
Aware of the edge

Risk involved
In completely trusting
And leaving well being
In computer hands

* * * * * * * * * * * * *

Vertical Streets

Crafts constructed
For the fall
Up - balloons
Down - aerodynamics

* * * * * * * *

Some Falls

Have technology
Get space age
Some ancient
More Zen

* * * * * * * * * * * *

There is a Child

Born into a fall

A mystic from the get go

The fallers take to her
Rally around her
Raise the child
As their own
Name her Si

100 parents

Feel guilt that
She will never know
Surface level life

But she is meant to happen

Si the seer

* * * * * * * * * * * *

Pit as Wormhole

Black hole

Time travel

Last fall first fall last

* * * * * *

Maybe the Mayans

Were the first fallers

* * * * * * * * * * *

Construction for the Fall

Items built
Dwellings
Resistance machines
So muscles don't atrophy
Furniture
Crafts
Made to fall
That make no sense
On level ground

* * * * * * *

A Photosynthesis

Is engineered
To occur from
The phosphor light
Descending harvest
Altered crops

* * * * * * * * * *

How Many Ways

Can you cook

A potato?

* * * * * * * *

A Bomb is Dropped In

By terrorists
Fallers guard it
Make sure it doesn't
Get near the edge
They must dismantle it
If detonation, the pit
Could fall in on itself

* * * * * * * * *

Renegade Jumper

A man
The person he wanted to be with
Was a faller
They said goodbye

Then he couldn’t be without
Sneaks into Big Hole
Past surface fencing and guards
Runs, jumps
In a streamlined machine made
To fall heavy and fast

* * * * * * * * * *

To Make Water

Atom splitting
Falling labs
Byproduct is energy
Danger
Water is essential
Explosions aren't

* * * * * * * * *

If You Fell Forever

After a while
It wouldn't be like falling at all
You'd become weightless in a sense
Oblivious to the grounded world

But oblivious is such a negative word
And the falling is not

It's a slow zero'd gravity
Billowing down through

* * * * * * * * * *

Suffice It To Say

The scenes are suffused
With so many things
Integral and overloaded

How do I say
What I don't know how to think?

What am I supposed to say
Other than this?

Nothing
Is doing

Phosphor lights the way

* * * * * * * * * *

Through the Falling Years

Moving less and less
Think more and more
Dreams mesh

Sleep in a bed
The bed is falling
Favorite part
To sleep while falling

Years and years