Strapped In to Feel Alive, or Nothing

Lyrics

Muchu Chhish.
The air tastes like iron filings.
Seven thousand meters up, and no one has ever stood here.
Except you, Fiona. And now me.

They called you Fearful Fiona.
A private joke for the woman who tests the steel dragons.
Who signs off on the ninety-degree drop.
The G-force that pins you to the seat.
Click-clack-click up the chain lift.
A measured, calculated terror, over in ninety seconds.
But here, in my hands, is a different record.
A small blue notebook, pages stiff with ice.
The ink is spiderwebbed from the cold.

Do you strap yourself in to feel alive?
To feel the blood rush, the scream tear from your throat?
Or do you strap in... to feel nothing at all?
Just the wind and the speed and the beautiful, empty noise.
Which one was it, Fiona?

I turn a frozen page.
Clinical terms next to desperate little drawings.
A log of the heart rate that spikes for no reason.
Not on the coaster, but in the checkout line.
The weight that isn't gravity.
The drop that has no safety harness.
You wrote that the ride always ends.
They unbuckle you, you walk away on shaky legs.
But this other thing... this other thing just waits.

Do you strap yourself in to feel alive?
To feel the blood rush, the scream tear from your throat?
Or do you strap in... to feel nothing at all?
Just the wind and the speed and the beautiful, empty noise.
The question hangs here in the cold.

You carried this all the way up.
Past the last camp, onto the 'Mouse Tooth' ridge.
An unclimbed peak for an unread diary.
Did you think the altitude would thin the words out?
Make them lighter?
Or did you just need a place so high, so unreachable...
that no one could ever read your answer?

I close the book.
The blue cover is the only color up here.
I leave the question where I found it.
Strapped in.
Waiting for the drop.