Warnings for references to suicide, blood, corpses.
The grey smack of pigeons
flying from the ledge, the rustle
of air on skin. The clatter of bike
against body, kneecaps on cobblestone,
skull on rock. His tinny voice, echoed
down the line, broken into binary.
The slick streak of blood on pavement,
squelched under feet; the crack of
ice in his eyes, glasz frozen
to glassy / colorless / fixed.
The whisper of green leaves
through grey sky, the pinpricks of wind.
His slurred syllables tumbled
from his mouth, a wretched pile of debris.
The grunt and heft of men
lifting flesh, the empty thud of it;
the scrape of dead knuckles
on pavement, fingers curled
like small, pale seashells. His bones,
collapsed under the weight of his fall,
the sudden everywhere shattering;
the distant thrum of
his heartbeat, a drop of rain
at the bottom of a well,
frozen / falling.
AN: Thanks to Mirith Griffin for her beta review, and for help with the title and the last image. Thanks to SongstersMiscellany for reminding me of John Cage's 4'33". The "sudden everywhere shattering" line is a play off of E.E. Cumming's line "carefully everywhere descending" in his somewhere i have never travellled,gladly beyond. The title is taken from Emily Dickinson's I heard a Fly buzz - when I died – (591). And, as always, thanks to you for reading.