The fall
The tall young man fainting by the crêpe cart on Church Street. The look on his face as he fell. I thought he was a dancer, turning so quickly to fabric and crumpling. The hollow sound of his body hitting the bricks. The crowd. The lady shouting 911. Another woman wailing. The beautiful fall light on the yellow leaves. The cobalt sky. People stopping and staring. The crowd getting thicker. The look on his face when he came to on the ground, his head in the hand of a stranger. Me over by a tree, at the back of the crowd, looking through elbows and pant legs and shopping bags down at his face, and his face turning slowly toward me, and his eyes blinking and rolling and stopping and staring at me through the hole in the crowd, and me staring back, and both of us lost in a blankness. The slowly coming back to where he was and where we were and then the terrible wondering where did he go and what did he see and why can't he go back there or can he?