One of the first people
I met when I came here
a-decade-and-a-half ago
jumped off a bridge
a few months back.
I'd heard it on the radio
during my morning commute
but didn't know that it was him.
I can't call him a friend.
He was a neighbor.
We butted heads
once or twice.
I saw his aggression
for what it was:
overcompensation
insecurity
weakness--
and kept a safe distance.
He claimed I was crazy
but I knew what he hid.
When he and his girl moved
out from below me
I wasn't sad.
I'll be frank:
I wasn't sad
when I heard the news
either
but when I saw the online fundraiser
posted by his wife's sister
and read about "the loss of her life partner"
and then after a brief Google search
read about her filing for divorce
a few weeks prior to his suicide
and then read how there would be
no memorial service
but a tree would be planted
in his honor at an undisclosed location
in a cemetery
and next read that the abundance
of funds would pay for a bench
so mourners could sit and reflect
under the limbs of this man's
return to the Universe
then I was sad;
not for the coward
who leapt into the Hudson
but for the three boys
he'd left behind
to a mother who'd pretended
that a life could be chalked up
to a pathetic plea for money
and some lousy landscaping work
at a place that no one
who tried to know him
will ever actually see.
He was named after
a soap opera character
and died just as melodramatically--
"in the belly of the beast,"
as he'd phrased it.
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