The Jumper

(What could I have said) they said he jumped why the I-5 bridge he wouldn’t have died no they said he didn’t jump I saw it on the news someone else said if you want to kill yourself you go to the top of the Fremont Bridge (I said In the Spring not thinking) It is spring she said (I smiled before I realized) he just wanted attention someone said he didn’t want (that I was in a different conversation) to kill himself not really (and then I couldn’t say anything) they said they took him to the mental hospital (I wanted to correct that to say that it is the regular hospital with a psychiatric ward but it is spring and I stayed silent).

Today my stomach is tight like rubber bands made of swallowed words wrap around my insides like the echoes of too many words rebounding against the guilt of my silence.

What could I have said that no one stands against the railing crosses the railing drives to the railing because they want attention that what he what we what I wanted was for it to stop for a different story to emerge and that the Fremont Bridge in Spring is an inside joke from the intake session that put me in the psychiatric unit get it fucking right the psychiatric unit where the nurse said if you jumped now you’d only break a leg you have to wait until Spring when the water is fast if you really want to kill yourself and how that if if if echoed but come Spring the trees were blooming and the joke was on me. And that poor bastard isn’t to the place where he sees flowers yet and now the meds will begin/resume and the group sessions and the constant monitoring and I wonder if he will sit where I sat for breakfast and if he will think what now what now what now and if he knows yet that everything will be different and if he knows yet that bridges will never be the same and that one day, if he makes it, he might hear of a jumper and not know what to say.