How long, I wonder, was the world’s longest suicide note?
And, however long it was, do you suppose it was long enough?
It was January, a Friday night just like this one.
It got dark early, and it got so dark.
The darkness didn’t even fall; it just seemed to spend half the day creeping slowly in and settling and swallowing up the city. It might have been a grim state of affairs. He could see how it might drive people to despair, or push them into dark hiding places; how it might lead them to will the telephone to ring, and then to recoil from its ringing.
What would they say if they did answer the phone, and could find their voice?
“Come over,” he supposed, or, “Come here.”
The darkness could easily shove people so far into themselves that they would never find their way back out. He saw it in the faces of the people around him –this fear, this process of retreat already well advanced– and tried hard to avoid the suspicion that he caught the occasional glimpse of it in his own reflection in the mirror.
He was lonely, but he didn’t yet wish to be left alone, though alone he so often was. He wasn’t yet ready to renounce human companionship or its possibility, the prospect that his life might still yield surprises, although he had no idea what they would be or even what he would hope them to be. Actually, he did have some idea, at least regarding the first question.
He believed he had a spirit, a soul, some purpose to his life that he had not yet fulfilled. His life, he had long imagined, was a long road that rolled toward him from some unseen place in the future and carried his destiny to him in halting and unpredictable installments.
He believed he was a decent man.
He could not, unfortunately, believe in angels.
All of these thoughts went through his head –very orderly– right up until the moment when he turned his back on the bridge and gently pushed his hands free of the railing.
Leave a Reply Cancel reply