Poetry

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He screams at the top of his lungs, swinging clenched fists through the air, twenty-stories above busy streets, tottering on the ledge; a crazy man. I hold tight to his penny.

Thirty years I've been standing on roof-tops talking would-be jumpers from leaping off ledges. Today’s different. Like watching the man through a long dark tunnel as he plays with eternity--I’m uncannily unattached. His face is wet from tears; red. Large veins crawl out from his black t-shirt up his thick pulsating neck; purple spider webs disappear somewhere in his black matted hair.

His flailing arms slice through the air in slow motion. A thousand hurt and angry, bitter and hopeless words blast from behind coffee-stained teeth; a shotgun peppering the atmosphere. I can’t hear one of them.The deafening silence of the moment has captured me--a space-time flytrap.

I practically live on these roofs.

He looks into my eyes. Begs me to give him a reason not to jump.

Truth: I rarely come to the ledges and witness anyone keeping their promise with the pavement. They’re not ‘jumpers’, they’re ‘standers’. They’re evening entertainment for 5 o’clock traffic. They come to talk to the man who always shows up. The man who will listen and remind them that nothing is really this bad. I’m that man; savior of sorts.

It’s funny that they send me…a tired man…lonely; a man who’s lost his family years ago because of the stress of this very job and my self-medicating diet: whiskey and Xanax.

The man screams something about carrying all the weight of the world on his shoulders. You and everyone else, pal...

Snap-flashes in my peripheral-subconscious: a projector starts screening a cherished memory in the theater of my mind. It intermingles with my reality; two visual streams intersecting. My daughter coming home from elementary school cries, “Daddy, Alicia (or Jennifer, or whoever it was that day) said she doesn't want to be my friend.”

Oh, my little girl. How the weight of the world was all of a few pennies on your back, but it was everything to your tiny heart. I’d hold you and tell you that it’d be ok. I’d cry inside, because of that tiny heart.

Why do they always send me? I’m the best.

My secret? Pennies.

Hundreds of times I've stood on these ledges telling the story of my daughter to would-be jumpers. I’d let them vent as long as they needed. Then, reaching behind their ears, I’d ‘magically’ retrieve their ‘penny.

“See here, now I have the weight of the world that’s been crushing you. No matter how bad it has been, it pales in comparison to the value of your life. Let me take it for you. Now come down. Talk to my friends about your new life.”
Always worked.

My baby girl is gone and I’m alone, old, tired. It’s because of my life on these roof-tops collecting pennies.

They never really want to jump, just want someone to acknowledge their pennies.

He stands staring at me. Maybe his legs are tired. Maybe he realizes how stupid it is to keep pretending he wants to jump. He wipes his wet eyes. Tears have escaped mine. He takes a step towards me. I think for that split moment when my soul lay open, he saw what real pain and weight was.

No words. I approach him. He hugs me and cries. I’d taken his ‘penny’. Buried it deep in my pocket; a one-cent-cemetery. I step to the ledge, look down at the people. Thousands of tiny insects all carrying pennies upon their backs. As far as I can see--pennies. An unending cycle in a world of copper.

I look to the sky…the vast expanse of fluffy cappuccino-foam elephants, unicorns, tigers. My little girl introduced me to them so many summers ago as we lay on blankets in the yard.

The warm butter of the sun upon my face disappears behind the metal, concrete, and steel skyscrapers; pillars of industry. Gods of the 21st Century.

I reach in my pockets retrieving two fistfuls of pennies and throw them into the air. From the streets below it must look like gold raining from Heaven. I’m tired of carrying everyone’s weight. Pennies are heavy. No more options. No more Home. I take a deep breath, about to leap into the ocean of oblivion…

Wait, what...‘gold raining from Heaven’?

Heaven?

“God? You there? I kinda need ya…”

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