My friends played in the church stairwell
To let the time go by.
I would have gone if I was brave,
But fear left me standby.
I wanted to go up the stairs,
But asking them was dumb.
One night, the tables turned on me;
My friends asked me to come.
“I don’t know if I want to go,”
I told them with a sigh.
But, oh, my face said differently.
One stopped to ask me why.
Rather than, “I am scared of heights,”
Instead, I heard me say,
“I’ve never been there, I don’t think.”
I turned to walk away.
I thought I wasn’t cool enough.
I bowed in childlike shame.
But I was shocked to hear the group
Start calling out my name.
I could not hope. To hang around
With them, it was a “plus.”
But they walked down and reached to me,
“You want to come with us?”
They waited for my answer there
As I stood on the floor.
I did not know what I should do.
They’d never asked before.
I tried to muscle down the strange,
Hard feeling in my gut,
And then my friends called down to me,
“Are you coming or what?”
My curiosity rose high,
And words all seemed to fail.
I palmed the long bar, black and cool,
And so I took the rail.
Ascending mighty orange steps,
I saw the brave within.
On that night when I took the stairs,
I realized I was “in.”