Ballerina

A red plastic rosary falls from my wrist to the river below. The Susquehanna River, they tell me, is the number one polluted river in the country. They dump raw sewage into it, I hear. Once some guy scuba dove to take some samples and afterwards they gave him three weeks of antibiotics just in case he’d caught something for which there weren’t even long names yet.

My ankles wobble and I remember my dance career and how it was cut short by my left ankle, which I’d broken in a recital. My parents had wanted me to pursue it, but I could only shrug off my disappointment. At least now I can eat.

Somewhere else I can hear a guy chattering on a cell phone in blatant run-ons. He is probably telling the police that there is a girl on the Market Street Bridge about to jump and they’d better do something. I always get out the moment I hear the siren.

I imagine that I am still a world-class ballerina, making millions enough to feed all the starving animals on the planet. I imagine cute boys. I imagine I am not a scrawny freckled nobody clinging on. I feel myself losing my grip, yet the terror is intoxicating. I will thoroughly enjoy my life for the next week: every food, ambrosia; every friend, amusing.

I lean over, just to feel the icy exhilaration pull at me, make me want to piss.

Somewhere they’re issuing a squad car and rescue team, so I bounce off, onto the sidewalk, pushing past the incredulous crowd.

When the police arrive, they will ask the people what the girl looked like, and how they gauged her as suicidal.

She was standing unsteadily at the edge. She was like all girls these days, wearing clothes from the GAP. She had brown hair and brown eyes. We don’t know where she’s going.

As I traveled down the dirty street past the homeless and self-important of downtown Wilkes-Barre, I do a pirouette, just for good measure. A bag lady clapped and I went on my way.