Lines of Falling

I wondered once whether people, too, had hidden lines, like
trees preserving in their rings the memory of rains, blights,
droughts. What would mine look like? Perhaps I would not need to
see them.

I would recognize them by the cut.
Something opened in me that summer. A deep gash, the kind
that announces the fall before it comes. I stood like a tree in the
instant after the cry - Timber! - but before the ground: still upright,
still whole in other people's eyes, suspended in an impossible
obedience, not knowing which way I might fall.