For the Girl on the Viaduct

Illustrated by Maja Kobylak.

For the girl on the viaduct, this moment

is centre; space

pivots the minute upon which

she has raised herself, the way

sky’s blues bow

to the point of a spire.

She is a spire; she is a stone in a busy river (she

is fifteen only, a child-no-longer-child).

For us stuck down here in the congestion, this moment

is brief spectacle, a floater

at the fringe of our vision. It is

interference (missed meetings/missed TV shows/prolonged

hunger). The girl

is an anecdote to embellish, to be

snatched with avid hands, to be broken and shared

over our tables at dinner.

She is also a reminder

of the times we stood on

our own bridges; of the ones we tried to help

others down from, and the times

we couldn’t. Of

those who did not jump, and woke

weeping because they hadn’t; of

those who did and woke howling

because they had.

She is a symbol, she is our

own children, she is our failure

to communicate. (She is

not a symbol, she is

a girl of fifteen.) She

steps down from the edge of the viaduct, 

an action she will repeat over and over,

in the supermarket, in the street, on

the sofa at home. She must

navigate rocky outcrops all her life, as she drives

along the apparent asphalt

that paves these city roads.