Nick Flynn

• BALCONY

• The radio claims the secret’s
• simple—it’s to always want
• to know what comes next & to
• let that want pull you back
• from the ledge, again & again.
• I have a friend who, the years
• he was drinking, would every
• night stack all his furniture in his
• living room in front of the sliding
• glass door, which led out to
• the fifth-floor balcony . . . He knew
• that once he’d had his first drink,
• eventually—soon—he’d black out
• & he worried he’d try to fly again.
• Couch. Table. Chairs. Bookcase.
• He dragged his furniture for years,
• every night as the sun went away
• & in the morning he put it all back
• in place, never considering, not
• once, that maybe he should stop.
• The one promise I can make is
• that I’m staying even though what
• knocks on our door at night has at
• its heart only my getting lost, even
• though some part of it wants me
• dead, which is why I feed it with a
• stick. You’ve already met it, but it
• didn’t show you all its teeth, it knew
• it had to lull you in, it knew you were
• skittery. It let you feed it by hand, it
• let you put a finger in its mouth, into
• its good, good mouth. It didn’t bite
• down, not hard, not then, not yet . . .