Natasha remembers standing on the guardrail,
gazing out across the Cape Fear River
glittering far below, the drone of traffic
at her back, but everything after that
is lost in blackout. She doesn’t remember
whether she jumped or fell, & nothing of
the impact, or the inky cold at the bottom
of the river, or the undertow
that kicked her back up to the surface. Later—
three days after regaining consciousness
in ICU—a nurse informed her how
a tugboat crewman had spotted something strange:
a dead girl floating facedown in the current.
How he caught her with a long hook as
she drifted past, & gently hauled her in.
I’m listening, but at the same time I
remember waking on a cell room floor
in 1983—with cold sweats, wave
on wave of tremors sweeping through me. She,
on the other hand, is lithe & breathtaking &
doesn’t look like she’s seen hell. And yet
tonight, in this packed speaker’s meeting in
the back of a Unitarian church, Natasha
shares her history, including her lover’s
suicide—by leaping from atop
the city parking deck five days before
her own failed effort—each fall leading to
the next, like the episodic & uncanny
fairy tales I used to read to my daughter
in the aftermath of my divorce . . . Sophia
would plop her sweet, pajama’d weight in my lap,
& I’d begin—Beautiful soup, so rich
and green, Waiting in a hot tureen—
& she would hold herself upright, & trace
each line with her fingertip. That’s how I listen
to Natasha now—the way my daughter
listened to me then, once she had settled
back into the current of my voice,
as if remembering that love & love
alone can carry us across the deep.
