We stand on the ledge where we’ve threatened to jump a thousand times. The traces
of freshly-painted asphalt against our naked toes are labyrinthine. I can see her neck when
the wind carries her hair into the evening.
The streetlamps and vehicles and buildings blend into one. She is so close. One step
and she will fly. We have spoken of flying--it never happens.
There is a witness watching through his telescope from one of the high-rises. He is a
few floors above us. He will get his money’s worth tonight. All the lights are glowing in the
man’s apartment. You can see the kitchen and bedroom and living room strewn with
furniture. He is sitting there in his underpants, waiting for us to die.
Of course, only we know that the time has come. Soon the entire street will be
awake and our parents will be aware and our boyfriend’s bodies will sob over our naked
texted photos.
She steps closer to the edge. Her little piggy is curled across the precipice. The nail
hangs there waiting, watching.
I inch closer, the bubbles writhing against my heels and toes and the balls of my feet
as if I’ve never felt them. She reaches out her anemic arms. A perfume bottle shatters. She
is a swimmer about to start a race. The glass cuts my big piggy and the moonlit blood is the
color of her nail polish, sparkling. She takes another step so that all her piggies are exposed.
I observe my gushing wound. I wait for her to dive and approach the edge. She
disappears without a whisper. The man jumps from his telescope and runs around his
apartment, from room to room, a rat illuminated in a maze.
Matthew Dexter lives in Cabo San Lucas, Mexico. Like the nomadic Pericú natives before him, he survives on a hunter-gatherer subsistence diet of shrimp tacos, smoked marlin, cold beer, and warm sunshine.