David Allen writes

FRAN

She was beautiful and smart 

and possibly the best 

reporter in our bureau, 

a free-spirited Californian 

working her way up 

the newspaper chains.

We toiled for a Virginia 

mid-sized daily. She 

had come from a smaller 

paper in Delaware, 

where her biggest story 

was a feature on the jumpers 

who chose the Chesapeake 

Bay Bridge for their final exit.

I loved her, we all did, 

but she arrived too late for me. 

I was engaged to the woman 

who would bear my children. 

Fran attended the wedding reception 

and, in a scene replayed 

in my mind a thousand times since, 

she took me aside and asked,

“Are you sure you want to do this?”

I already had, I answered.

We became good friends, 

part of a small clique 

that hung around my backyard barbecue 

and, with burgers and beers in hand 

we talked about where we’d go and 

which papers would be next.

She became close to another reporter 

to whom she shared her secret doubts 

and fears, like how she once parked 

on the railroad tracks and waited 

trembling for the train that never came.

A year passed. 

And then one day 

she was gone. 

We later learned 

she had driven back 

to Delaware and parked 

her car in the middle of her bridge 

and made her jump.

I never got to say, 

“Are you sure you want 

to do this?”

Instead, I ran to the men’s 

room at work and howled 

and mourned like I had never before 

or since.

She haunts me sometimes 

in dreams – though not as 

often these days – her clothes soaked, 

smiling through broken teeth, 

gesturing to a bridge.

“Care to take the leap?” she asks 

“The fall was exhilarating and 

though death’s baptism hurt 

it did not last. And I am 

no longer insecure.”

“But you are also 

no longer,” I answer. 

And I turn away 

and awake and 

return to where I am 

in the middle of my 

own leap into life.

I am sure I want to do this.