Dead Man Falling

Someone died at 475 East Broad Street Midtown Manor
My neighbor saw his brains splashed on the ground
after we returned from the special shopping run
provided by medical motor services

I had just directed her attention to the courtyard . she's new here and I was telling her what a lovely place it is during the day. How quiet and peaceful.

and she said o i thought i saw a body there
she did see the body and more
and she alerted management to the death just outside their office window.

When she went to tell the manager she was told "I'm on the phone, I'm busy"

this is such a time and place of despair. was it the environment or the person
personal tragedy?


He couldn't have been pushed says the maintenance guy because the balcony rails are 4 feet high.

He didn't live here, he just came here to die.

He may have been shot and pushed someone else said. When they finally turned him over , two
hours later after lying with his brains splattered on the concrete, when they turn him over the coroner
a she, jumped back I was told.
It's not just the brains, it was the stomach or pelvis, gut spill.

the police had said he may have jumped from the balcony on the 12th floor...
is the door always open they asked me after knocking urgently on my door
more often than i like i said
because i have a sign asking that the door be kept closed to keep the bugs out

i digress.... someone either jumped or was pushed today between 1015 and noon.

by the afternoon i learn i was not from my balcony but higher up. The cleaning lady saw his body fall past her as she ate lunch on the 15th floor.

Debbie on the second floor heard him hit, thought it was a gunshot.


Why was it left for Katharyn and i to see, I don't know. Had it happened only moments before? We were the last to enter from the shopping group as I in the wheelchair am the last one unpacked and unloaded and she waited with me... In fact I had even checked my mail first before pausing at the elevators to gesture toward the courtyard.....


this early evening i called Lynne to see how Katharyn fared and we decided to go downstairs to the site-- i with prayers and sea salt for cleansing and she with incense. She had already lit and left a white candle and there was a white rock with a wreath of leaves and her candle, burning, invisible to the eye but visible in the glass and this i saw with discomfort was right in front of the rear entrance.... the wide glass entrance


and people tracked right through his blood and flies still buzzed and i saw the wavy white lin of salt
i had cast as i rolled and prayed.....

we spoke with Dolores a tall long bowlegged woman like a walking sculpture with pink and white nails and a short thick fro an african bracelet on her ankle she was distressed and knew that Sam
the deceased had attended East House, a program not a place and that he lived in Savannah Gardens, the units facing Midtown Manor that framed the courtyard and her plump pretty little girl contributed a small branch to the shrine and then a woman who looked to me to be in pain but who smiled named Sabrina came. She had many tiny teeth and was dressed all in black .

she had placed the stone and had come upon the dead man and had watched the fireman spread his blood with their hoses, sadly she said washed up on the building.

She asked me if I was Wiccan. LOL! and she appreciated how there were three women holding wake
making peace in the space.

I worried about the young mother who had seen him fall. Dolores said these young people treat it like watching a movie, not like you or I. after i had suggested that maybe the young mother might need to see someone after seeing such horror.

I spoke of my godmother, a woman I loved and respected and admired, who losing her sight, wrapped her head up and leapt. She had been a psychiatric nurse and so I guess her brains weren't spalltered to hosed off the sidewalk.

Did the children now thronging the courtyard see. Dolores was concerned that no one had tracked Sam... someone should have been in touch with him, I confessed that I had considered doing the same thing but remained, if only because so many worked so hard for me to be here even in this half life.

Last night i had not slept well. Jacquie told me the same. What good is prescience, if we could not act, send out comfort, put out the fire of despair, discomfort that woke us in the wee hours.

Though Sam lived in Savannah, I head he came to Midtown Manor to say goodbye to a friend on the 18th floor. Who was it?

Sabrina thanked us. We thank her for her good intention. She thought it might have been a friend of hers, she couldn't tell from the bashed up body. But the detectives told her no it wasn't.

She said she wished she had met me earlier. Earlier than what I wondered. I asked her if she was in pain and she said yes, but she was blessed because she could still walk, unlike me.

Too true.