Life Leap by Ian Jade
It will pain me unbearably to take credit for this piece. I simply wrote a continuous story based on a couple of lyrics and a nursery rhyme. I was incredibly inspired by a lyric written and sung by Annika Aakjær, a Danish singer-songwriter. If you speak Danish, I encourage you to listen to the song ‘Det bedste for mig selv’ because the text is an expression of utter beauty and pain. If you don’t, I have done my best to integrate the lyric in the song below. The other lyric is by the Faroe Island based singer-songwriter Teitur who always has been a great inspiration. The song is ‘All My Mistakes’. I wanted to use more of it, but found it hard to use. With no intentions of plagiarising, I was simply inspired to write.
The trains are delayed again. I imagine the asphalt beneath me melting, enclosing my unclothed feet and trapping me on the platform as the enduring sun would torture me. People around me raised and lowered their arms consistently every thirty second, as drops of perspiration slowly took shape on their foreheads. There’s probably many who’ll get home late. The enduring sun was egregious. There comes a time when you must stay in the moment.
And nobody could predict - it completely caught the conductor unawares - when I leapt from life and took everything for granted and without saying goodbye, I did what is best for me. A lone, black bird spread its wings and laid comfortably upon the blue waves of air and let itself glide across the skies high above. It screeched in a cry for attention but I paid it no attention.
I look around and watched the chasms in the faces around me deepen. Even as blood flees heart and air lungs, I sing to myself, one for sorrow… two for mirth … three for funeral … four for rebirth … five for heaven … six for hell … seven for a secret never to be told.
To the irritation of many, my station is closed for a while. I wonder that on a regular day as today, I was the uncomfortable cause of so many and wonder that so many was touched even before the next train would leave the station. But there was a lot to clean up where I left my body when I leapt from life and did what was best for me.
