Excerpts from "Leap" by Brian Doyle
A couple leaped from the south tower, hand in hand.
They reached for each other and their hands met and they jumped.
Jennifer Brickhouse saw them falling, hand in hand.Many people jumped. Perhaps hundreds. No one knows. They struck the pavement with such force that there was a pink mist in the air.
The mayor reported the mist.
A kindergarten boy who saw people falling in flames told his teacher that the birds were on fire.
She ran with him on her shoulders out of the ashes. [...]Stuart DeHann saw one woman's dress billowing as she fell, and he saw a shirtless man falling end over end,
and he too saw the couple leaping hand in hand.Several pedestrians were killed by people falling from the sky. A fireman was killed by a body falling from the sky.
They reached for each other and their hands met and they jumped.
Jennifer Brickhouse saw them falling, hand in hand.Many people jumped. Perhaps hundreds. No one knows. They struck the pavement with such force that there was a pink mist in the air.
The mayor reported the mist.
A kindergarten boy who saw people falling in flames told his teacher that the birds were on fire.
She ran with him on her shoulders out of the ashes. [...]Stuart DeHann saw one woman's dress billowing as she fell, and he saw a shirtless man falling end over end,
and he too saw the couple leaping hand in hand.Several pedestrians were killed by people falling from the sky. A fireman was killed by a body falling from the sky.
But he reached for her hand and she reached for his hand and they leaped out the windows holding hands. [...]Their hands reaching and joining is the most powerful prayer I can imagine, the most eloquent, the most graceful. It is everything we are capable of against horror and loss and death. It is what makes me believe that we are not craven fools and charlatans to believe in God, to believe that human beings have greatness and holiness within them like seeds that open only under great fires, to believe that some unimaginable essence of who we are persists past the dissolution of what we were, to believe against evil hourly evidence that love is why we are here.
[...]Maybe they didn't even reach for each other consciously, maybe it was instinctive, a reflex, as they both decided at the same time to take two running steps and jump out the shattered window, but they did reach for each other, and they held on tight, and leaped,and fell endlessly into the smoking canyon, at two hundred miles an hour, falling so far and so fast that they would have blacked out before they hit the pavement near LIberty Street so hard that there was a pink mist in the air.Jennifer Brickhouse saw them holding hands, and Stuart DeHann saw them holding hands, and I hold onto that.
1 opmerking:
Yo, lekker gaan bloggen. Ik moet in elk geval wel even zitten voor dat engels hoor. Ik ben liever lui dan moe haha!
Lekker gewerkt vandaag? Nou, via deze weg dan mijn blogadres!
Leuk dat je ffies kwam buurten!
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