Falling All Those Stories Down Poem by LaWanda Walters

remembering, ten years later)

Imagine the kind of love,
the instant-coffee marriage,
that fastness of vows
some could give each other

to jump from the high window
together, holding hands.
Those are stories we can almost bear,
people flying down the towers,

falling with the debris,
lucky enough to lock arms
so in twos or threes
they fell like angels.

Unbearable to watch how some flew
alone, turned upside-down like
a paper doll or a ship's sail.
Unbearable to think of the ones inside.

The ones who jumped
had to leave the burning others
whose pain I have no right
to speak of—whose stories

are as far away as stars.
But some of you gripped hands,
while all those stories were burning
down, you held fast to a strange hand.

It was anyone's hand, and now
the strangest love,
the quickest love of saying Jump with me
and be the one who understands my life.