A Suicide in Berkeley
by
Bill Clearlake
8/3/97

I don't know what made me look out my office window at just that moment.  

I certainly didn't expect to see her.

Falling.

It was not an ungraceful fall.

Yet there was nothing of elegance or drama.

One might have expected screaming or panicked flailing...

No.

She fell like...

A heavy book falling from a shelf.

She fell...

One leg struck the top of the fire escape...

Of the building next to the taller one she jumped from.

It severed at the knee and lay on the roof...

Without her.

And she hit the street in her long black dress.

And stopped the pain.

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Copyright (c) 1997 by Bill Clearlake