June 19

 What is it about the Abyss 
that tempts the young poet to kiss 
the air and head for the nearest cliff? This 
unreasonable attachment to the bliss 
of falling -- what accounts for it? Unlike the hiss 
announcing a reptilian presence, the word Abyss 
creates the object of our dread: it exists, it is, 
widening like the gulf between whis- 
key and wine, and we, drunk on neither, miss 
the days when we, too, tumbled headlong out of heaven, pissed

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