I love you!
She shouted, as she jumped out of a window on the 44th floor.
I love you!
Tumbling and cartwheeling through the pale air;
Legs like knitting needles in angora clouds.
I love you!
Past crouching silent couples, sofa bound, watching telly in the gloom.
I love you!
Past business suits and pie charts
And spotty waiters serving canapes.
Past wedding couples pushing knives into a cake;
And red-nosed men standing sweating, drinking at a wake.
Past doctors giving bad news,
And smartly hopeful interviews.
I love you! I love you!
Swinging down, coat flying, buttons straining, panting, laughing, crying.
A toddler holds Lego in her hand and looks as love flies,
And ploughs into the ground, and dies.
xxx
Picture via Creative Commons, via:
http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/3/34/(2007_03)_Dama_-_Divulga%C3%A7%C3%A3o_(4)
Writer's notebook 
Could we just rewind and make her go back up? Love it. Although the comments got me thinking about the Australian movie Strictly Ballroom…Who know where I’ll end up with that?
Posted by olganm | October 26, 2014, 5:35 pmThat’s where the Strictly part of the title comes from. It’s an odd combination, but it’s such a big part of British popular culture and so familiar that the title is just, well, what it is.
Rewind….now there’s an idea. I might have a go at that.
Posted by elainecanham | October 26, 2014, 6:03 pmOh man is this ever powerful!, Oh man this truly is a poem that hits your reader hard. You write so well. I posted that I like your poem not because the subject is something I want to read about but because it’s a subject that needs to be talked about. Mental health is an issue that needs to be brought to the light of day by openly dialoging about it.
Posted by georgiakevin | October 26, 2014, 3:33 amThanks. Although I wasn’t thinking about any kind of issue, really. I just had to write it down.
Posted by elainecanham | October 26, 2014, 9:04 amNot entirely cheering, but certainly arresting, and I was gripped in a kind of horror by the opening lines, and then the sense of life described by the various scenes she passes on the way to her awful demise. It is gripping and thought provoking. How nice, if my some unrealistic miracle he had sprung out of nowhere, caught her and said “I’m not entirely indifferent to you myself”
Posted by Peter Wells aka Countingducks | October 25, 2014, 7:55 pmyes, maybe she could have had a parachute…difficult to find a rhyme for that, though 🙂
Posted by elainecanham | October 25, 2014, 8:20 pmParachute
Kinda cute
Wasn’t jokin’
When it wouldn’t open.
Posted by Bruce Goodman | October 25, 2014, 8:31 pmPulled the ripcord;
Oh gawd.
Tried the spare:
Wasn’t there.
Posted by elainecanham | October 25, 2014, 8:39 pmI savored opening this one as seeing the title I thought my luck was in. T’was a very short engagement.
xxx Huge Hugs xxx
Posted by davidprosser | October 25, 2014, 7:24 pmBut meaningful. I once did a story (for a paper) about a woman who threw herself off the Empire State Building, and was blown back in through an open window, several floors down. Amazing.
Posted by elainecanham | October 25, 2014, 8:41 pmHmmm… That’s a little dark for you. But, then again, I’m watching A Nightmare on Elm Street.
Posted by naptimethoughts | October 25, 2014, 7:03 pmOh I dunno, you have to go over to the dark side, occasionally. Although I’m watching Strictly Come Dancing at the moment (Dancing with the Stars, I think it is, in America)
Posted by elainecanham | October 25, 2014, 7:18 pmStrictly come dancing? WTF kind of name is that? who came up with that name? It’s like “dancing with porn stars”.
Posted by naptimethoughts | October 25, 2014, 8:14 pmIt’s a British Institution. It’s the child of Come Dancing which used to be on late at night when telly was in black and white. And it was Truly Awful.
I’d never thought of why its name has been changed for the US. Hah!
Posted by elainecanham | October 25, 2014, 8:22 pmReally who won last year? Jenna Jameson? Or perhaps Shakira– I thought it was Latino dance that made you strictly come Dancing.
Posted by naptimethoughts | October 26, 2014, 12:08 amIt was Abbey Clancy – she’s a scouser WAG. (She comes from Liverpool and is married to England footballer Peter Crouch) Who is Jenna J?
Posted by elainecanham | October 26, 2014, 8:58 amA porn star. Like THE porn star. I’seen her come (you know, like THAT come, I hate writing it in the spelling that is correct and proper for the other meaning) while dancing, but not strictly while dancing.
Posted by naptimethoughts | October 26, 2014, 2:37 pmI don’t even know where to begin to reply. Except that Susanna Reid (who was a runner up last year) and who is an ITV Breakfast Show presenter got into terrible trouble last week for (quite innocently) saying to some actor that he must have beaten off quite a few stars to get his role. When he covered his face with his hands she just repeated the question. Epic.
Posted by elainecanham | October 26, 2014, 3:15 pmI was on the edge of my seat! You could write an entire novel; each chapter a disappearing floor. Now there’s a thought.
Posted by Bruce Goodman | October 25, 2014, 6:33 pmGo on…I dare you!
Posted by elainecanham | October 25, 2014, 7:17 pmWell since no else will ask I guess I will. Is this about a suicide or is it an allegory about failed or lost love?
Posted by lbwoodgate | October 25, 2014, 6:09 pmI don’t really know. The second, I think. It just arrived in my brain when I woke up this morning.
Posted by elainecanham | October 25, 2014, 6:15 pmLove it!
Posted by john zande | October 25, 2014, 2:33 pmThanks!
Posted by elainecanham | October 25, 2014, 4:23 pmImaginative and original
Posted by billgncs | October 25, 2014, 1:50 pmthank you.
Posted by elainecanham | October 25, 2014, 2:26 pm