No One’s Still in Bethlehem

Two engineers, aged 19 and 21, stood on top
of a wind turbine that had caught fire
in Holland. They embraced. One then
jumped—there is a terror greater than falling.

The other succumbed to the blaze—
there is no greater terror than falling.
Neither lived; fall and flame perhaps
are nothing that should be compared

maybe ever, but especially
when you’ll see your loved ones tomorrow,
or the next day and you’ll see the world after work,
or after you’re totally done working.

It was fine that things are pushed off.
But this news story makes you want to kill yourself.
Because you know life is short—
you knew it before this damn story—

and you still do not do what you want to do
and you continue to do what you do not
want to do, what you know
sabotages your every dream.

Because two young men got to hug
before perishing  and it’s been so long
since you got one that you’re burning
like a razed city with envy

but not like, not ever like,
what so, so many around you sing about rapturously

in the arms of someone who wants them forever,

even if they’re falling to their death.

Megan Wildhood is a writer, editor, and writing coach who helps her readers feel seen in her monthly newsletter, poetry chapbook Long Division (Finishing Line Press, 2017), her full-length poetry collection Bowed As If Laden With Snow (Cornerstone Press, May 2023), as well as Mad in America, The Sun and elsewhere. You can learn more about her writing, working with her, and her mental-health and research newsletter at meganwildhood.com