Statistics

 

Zvi A. Sesling

 

          When Louis jumped off the Hancock Tower in downtown Boston, a police statistics specialist said Louis fell about seventy feet the first seven seconds, then around one hundred feet per second after that. Someone who saw it from across the street said he looked faster than a Tesla starting at a green light.

          One would think there be damage when he hit bottom, but he did not even dent the sidewalk despite the fact Louis was traveling downward at pretty close to one hundred miles per hour. 

Instead, upon hitting the sidewalk, Louis nearly disintegrated when he crashed at the bottom. Pieces of him and his blood splattered passersby carrying bags from the fancier stores along Boylston Street and Newbury Street.

          The pieces of flesh and liquid humanity caused four women to scream and faint on Clarendon Street. Three men similarly dowsed vomited  when they realized what had landed on them. There were two children who witnessed the meeting of Louis and the pavement causing them to require psychological counseling. The security guard on the sixtieth floor who neither saw Louis leap nor would have been able to prevent it even if he had seen Louis go over the edge of the observation deck was fired.

         No one, not the police, doctors, psychologists and psychiatrists or anyone else for that matter, could figure out why Louis had chosen to end his life in that manner.

         However, statisticians who computed the distance from top to bottom and the estimated speed of descent, did figure out how long it took Louis to reach his ultimate end.

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      Zvi A. Sesling, Brookline, MA Poet Laureate (2017-2020), has published numerous poems and flash/micro fiction and won international prizes. A five-time Pushcart Prize nominee, he has published four volumes and three chapbooks of poetry. His flash fiction book is Secret Behind the Gate. He lives in Brookline, MA. with his wife Susan J. Dechter.

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      Bernice Holtzman’s paintings and collages have appeared in shows at various venues in Manhattan, including the Back Fence in Greenwich Village, the Producer’s Club, the Black Door Gallery on W. 26th St., and one other place she can’t remember, but it was in a basement, and she was well received. She is the Assistant Art Director for Yellow Mama