No Foul Play Suspected

(On a woman who committed suicide by jumping from the fourteenth floor of an HDB block of flats; her family said she was unemployed, had been suffering from cancer for a year and had had a boyfriend who broke off with her when she told him about her illness.)

'No foul play suspected.'
Presence of ill-health, money problems, a broken love
affair
Is absence of foul play.
And so
Police file, newspaper report, family conscience
Can be closed and put away

In this case, there were all three, poor woman.
What about the suicide note?
That, say the police
Is even greater proof
That no foul play took place in this woman's death.

But there was plenty of foul play in my life
The woman must have thought
As she hurtled past
The pair of slippers later found by the railing

The one-room rented flat
The ex-lover
The incredible solitude
To meet the shocked upward gaze of a child on his
way to school,
And land near the shocked child's feet.
"Did you see anyone with the woman before she fell?"
asked the police.
"No, only the woman," said the dazed child truthfully.
"She was alone."
And that was yet more proof.

- Catherine Lim