Parachute

Because a lie is not a lie if the teller
believes it, the way beautiful things

reassure us of the world’s wholeness,
of our wholeness, is not quite a lie.

Beautiful things believe their own
narrative, the narrative that makes them

beautiful. I almost believed it
until the new mother strapped

her infant to her chest, opened
the eighth-floor window,

and jumped. My daughter tells me,
after her preschool field trip

to the Firefighter Museum,
about the elephant mask, its hose

like a trunk, and the video of a man
on fire being smothered in blankets.

She asks me if she knows anyone
who got dead in a fire, anyone who

got fired. When will I die? she asks.
When I was a child, I churched

my hands, I steepled my hands,
and all the people were inside,

each finger a man, a woman,
a child. When I die, will you

still love me? she asks. The mother
cracked on the pavement—

how did the baby live? Look,
he smiles and totters around

the apartment eight stories up.
Beautiful things reassure us

of the world’s wholeness:
each child sliding down the pole

into the fire captain’s arms.
But what’s whole doesn’t sell

itself as such: buy this whole apple,
this whole car. Live this whole life.

A lie is not a lie if the teller
believes it? Next time the man

in the video will not ignite.
The baby will open like a parachute.