Jump

<-- Not my picture

Her feet dangle precariously over the edge of the bridge, hovering almost miles above churning water. She sits on a cinder block, hard and rough like sandpaper, that is tied to her ankle with a long piece of rope. She sits contemplating, I can see her thinking. Weighing the pros and cons of jumping. Her hair is thin, falling off her head in thin wisps that hover over her shoulders and down her back. Her fingers are even thinner, like pencils, combing through that thin hair, raking it back from her forehead. I wonder what exactly she's thinking about. What made her want to jump in the first place? Smoke spirals out of my lips as I exhale, the last of my cigarette burning away on the pavement. She stands up, standing on tip-toe on the cinder block, leaning forward to stare into what I can only imagine to be her future; the water below us. I contemplate yelling "Jump!", but decide against it; she wouldn't look good all bloated and water-logged. I just keep watching her. She is pacing now, looking over the edge at the water. I find myself drawing closer, captivated by her hypnotic motions. Right, left, glance over, right, left, glance. She stops and looks over at me. Our eyes meet for a second, and she mouths something to me, I can't make it out. I watch her turn around again, stepping off the edge and falling. I don't know what's happening, I'm jumping after her. My hand grabs her wrist, and I find us both dangling upside down, hanging from a rope around her ankle. She was laughing. She was crying. She didn't want to die. She just wanted to see if someone would care enough to jump after her. She explains to me later that she glued the cinder block to the pavement, she wouldn't have fallen anyway. I can smell the cigarette smoke on both of our breaths, we have something in common.