WITNESS

I met a man who was compelled to tell his story about witnessing a suicide. On this particular day, driving past a hospital he had driven past a thousand times, he heard his son in the back seat whisper, "That woman jumped out of the window." When he turned to look, he was staring straight into her eyes as she fell. What he saw unnerved him. He said she looked pleased, satisfied. It was an intimate moment. Too intimate. He could not grasp the concept of wanting to die so he looked away. His mind struggled with what he saw and tried to make her want to live. Now he lives with two discordant images in his head, even though he found out later that this was not her first attempt at suicide, just her best.

I couldn't get his story out of my head. It made me omniscient. I was watching him watch her. I was compelled to write this poem in his voice.

                    Gravity

Somewhere,

between the ninth floor and Earth,

I turn my eyes away,

but not before I see hers,

naked in their desire for death,

fulfilled in the falling. 

Like a photographer’s flash,

the image of her body

develops a memory

of hands seeking purchase

at each passing ledge.

Still she falls, and falls, and falls.