Richard O'Brien

The Break 

‘s what raises you
	and places you above
the life you’re leaving, severed
	from the one you live;
what hurls you forth
	and holds you to the light;
whatever makes you into someone who’s made it,
and ‘it’’s the break, and what comes afterwards.

The break’s a falling-off
	that isn’t flight;
is where you score the line decisively,
where change asserts its edge;
is where the present stops being itself,
	the past becomes a cliff;
is what divides, on
	either side, ‘What if’.

It’s where we wait
		until
		     whatever’s next;
is the white spaces in the text;
	is what’s suspended between page and pen
before the leader signs the law;
	is where we pause;
		is where we start again.