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I peer down over the ledge, down into the impossible depths of the canyon that yawns before my feet; a hungry mouth waiting to swallow me whole. The wind whirls around me, my skirt whipping about my legs as if the wind itself is pressing its invisible hands against my back, willing me into the abyss.

I close my eyes, savoring the thrill of fear that shoots through me at the thought of letting go and tumbling, impossibly slow and unbearably quick. I can almost imagine the air rushing past me as I am turned and spun through the air like a child’s doll that had been thrown. The air would steal the breath from my body and whisk my screams (involuntary, you know, not from any real fear or despair; that’s what I would be getting away from) away before they could be heard clearly; a thin, high, wavering cry would echo up…. And then silence.

Blissful oblivion.

I open my eyes, looking down again as the wind presses harder into my back. I look with longing into that dark, fathomless hollow that, I believe, drops into the heart of the Earth. My whole being aches unbearably with wanting, desperate for the ecstasy of falling. I give a pained sigh, almost a moan, but no one hears. No one, that is, but the ever-present wind that whistles its mournful dirge over the canyon.

I hear him call for me, his voice faint on the wind, and I sigh. I look for one last moment down into what I know could be my escape, and then I turn and walk back down the hill, back to him, smiling at the very man I had hoped to lose in my desperate leap. Perhaps one day, I will know what falling is like.

But not today.