We are all on it.
Teetering on a narrow blade. It could cut us clean through. A precarious knife’s edge. Uncomfortable. Terrifying. How do we stay balanced without the bloodletting? Do we need the hemorrhage to heal?
There is no off ramp. We either leap forward or fall backward. And the outcome is uncertain. It seems to be a fateful reckoning we cannot avert. We can try to ignore it, run away from it, anaesthetize it, sugarcoat it, even embrace it! It matters not.
We are on a perilous perch.
Can we love enough to stay upright? Or do we push and shove each other off the overcrowded precipice, making space solely for our own tribe? If we do that won’t the razor cut too deep? There is no saving oneself at the expense of another.
I wish we could avoid the cutting, the bleeding, the pain, the uncertainty, the danger before us.
It is a perilous perch.
Huddled together, like castaways on a life raft stranded at sea. Choppy waters all around. No vision of dry land or rescue in sight. Must we swim in this crimson pool?
Which way do we go? Right or left? No longer can there be a middle. Something must tip the scale. The logjam must break. Rushing waters will force a destination.
Does anyone know how this story ends? In this moment I feel the slicing, cutting, bloodlust gathering. The America I knew and believed in is gone. What will form to replace her? Love, peace, equality, or a cauldron of foment, turmoil, and narcissistic violence?
We are on a precipice, a razor’s edge. Together we leap forward or fall backward, but we can no longer straddle the middle. It will cut us clean through.
A perilous perch.
Jill Broscious 