I stared as hundreds of inmates, in an act of astonishing acceptance, lined themselves up along the roof’s edge and began to jump—some alone, many holding hands, their skirts billowing about them, soft curls flying every which where through a sparkling midnight sky. It was breathtaking. Suicide, I thought, is a cold, ugly, desperate thing, and, when it happens, it is always lonely. Suicide is not the poetic act that our painters portray. But the truth is that, in this moment alone, it was.
