By Camden Rose
Third story:
He jumped.
Her brother worked on his life—
or rather his death—
on the 3rd floor.
Teetering between
the ledge of the parking garage
and the desire to step off,
one halfway tied shoe
swaying out above the complex
and back above the concrete,
only to repeat the process again.
He may have jumped 3 stories
but he had fallen way before
the leap.
Second story:
She cried.
Both daughters had worked at the sushi bar
the floor below the act.
The place where
one was once a waitress
and the other was now a hostess.
The hostess found the car.
The waitress found the hospital room
to be too quiet, too precise,
too far away.
One hour and forty-nine minutes to be exact
if she was to leave right now.
The whole family could properly grieve
in the time it would take her to
speed down the highway.
Going back to college was hard,
knowing that the rubber band
pulling her back to that beeping room
might snap at any time.
First story:
They survived.
The pavement was
hard, cracked, broken,
the color of his fading face,
the texture of his body.
He was slammed into an ambulance and sped off to the ICU.
The place where they fix things.
Where they fixed his broken wrist
and the bones in his face.
Where they inserted flexible pipes down his throat so he could
breath normally.
Where the outer damage disappeared.
Crazy what they can do these days,
his mother had said.
She had gotten the call while she was in Italy.
His biological sister soon thereafter
The one away at college didn’t know
it had even happened—
or even why it did—
until she was back for break,
a week later,
when it suddenly made sense
why her stepmother
didn’t hug her
when she got back
from out of the country,
but instead packed an overnight bag
and left.
In lieu of a regular post, I have decided to post a poem I wrote about half a year ago when my step brother attempted suicide by jumping off a three story parking garage. Thankfully, by the grace of God, he had no long-lasting physical injuries and is currently in remediation.
Camden's Corner 