Two Balconies In Santa Luzia

Our balconies were adjacent to each other

each night, when time was our own, we would sit on ours

reading, greedy for the heat

unfamiliar on our Irish skin

they would eat late and the aromas would creep around to us

and tantalise

he sounded French, she, Portuguese, though they talked little

we heard their glasses clink on their glass topped table

the longest conversation we heard was their last

first, the sound of a chair sliding on the terracotta tiles

then, in accented English

“I love you.”

“I love you too.”

“Tell them I fell.”

as gravity pulled him down he lived another second, maybe two

then, he didn’t

he was a person

then, suddenly, he was a body

she tried to scream but only a kind of strangled wheeze escaped her

our balconies were separated by a wall

I could not see her

there were a thousand miles between us

“Are you okay?”, I asked.