Coincidence.

I took a bold step to the right and the branches sway.
They bow under the wind and under my weight.
The leaves riot in a warning as the limb bends.
It bends.
And it does not matter.
The wind meets me and the ancients offer me a spindly hand.
But I do not take it.
Instead I try to grasp at the wind and feel myself fall away--
Or rather,
I see the trees and field fall away as I am--in my astonishment--carried up and up.
(Like a balloon, except I wear a shirt, jeans, and sneakers. And I am oddly shaped.)

I see the cats on the red rooftops, with clouds in their eyes, thinking it was giant silver fish.
For how long I carry on like that, I do not know.
But it gets colder and colder until the roofs and the buildings turn into hazy little dots that fade
Out of sight.

Then the wind makes a dreadful mistake.
It stops blowing.
I tumble headlong down the sky --for I am not a balloon but a girl--with nothing to cling to.
{9.8 meters / second, theoretically, in a vacuum.}
As the blur of a world became more and more of what I knew it to be,
I close my eyes and try to think happy thoughts.
But all I can think of is dying.

It felt like a really, really long time.
Then I stop falling, just like that.

I look around and find myself still intact, standing on the pavement of an unfamiliar neighborhood just as you turn round the corner.

'Hey.'

I smile back and try to find my way back home.