If you saw me at all you must have seen me falling as a dark image against a white sky legs scissor out and wondered if you imagined me or if I existed like you but was falling through thousands of feet of air as if I were swimming towards the pavement through water as if there could have been a safe landing or maybe the second you caught a glimpse of me falling through the sky like Icarus you denied to yourself that you saw me because you could not believe you saw a person just like yourself on an ordinary Monday morning falling through the air and behind me others falling like leaves off a burning tree the metal buckling the thick black smoke the orange flames raging insanely the entire scene on your television must have seemed stranger than fiction or better just like a movie. I bet you kept the television on after you saw me fly through the air, but the networks never showed another jumper moving through the air so you wondered if that black image against the white sky with the orange flames was only something you imagined for an instant like a black beast in the underbelly or your own imagination. There was no choice with the heat and the flames behind us and our bodies moving towards the open window and the cool September air and I never was an athlete in high school and never imagined myself taking that flying leap into a rush of cool air where the flesh cried relief and the eyes blurred and the entire city spread- eagled below me and that sensation of moving slowly almost floating through a dark tunnel as the pavement moved closer like the palm of a giant hand to greet me. I was the jumper and I jumped just like you would because there was no other choice and there was no way out and I was taken off guard when I least expected it and forced to leave the desk where I had sat so comfortably for the last ten years and forced to see a window as if it were a door I had to push open because the heat behind me was moving closer and the smoke had begun to thicken so I could no longer breathe and that is how I jumped into the next century. It’s almost funny since I never jumped before and was certainly not athletic and no one could call me brave because I am an ordinary woman just like you and I was sitting at my desk when it hit imagining the pot roast dinner I would serve to our company Saturday night.