Some guy got shot on the corner two blocks from my apartment two nights ago. I was smoking a cigarette on my terrace, around 10:30PM when helicopters decended on me.

My hair was blown in circles around the crown of my head and as I raised my hand to protect the cherry of my burning cigarette, a bright search light blinded me.

Without thinking, I shrunk away from the light and quickly pulled the blinds to protect myself from whatever was decending upon the Eastside of Manhattan.

While I continued to smoke my cigarette without a thought of concern, a man bled to death from a gunshot wound on the pavement within my eyes view.

As he bled, and probably prayed for his life, or imagined a future with his lover or envisioned kids he may or may not have had but definitely wanted, I crushed my smoked cigarette in my beanbag ashtray. Then I looked at my face in my mirror, squinching it up, wondering if people see what I see when I look. I pulled at my hair, contorted it into a couple of shapes, sampled a new lipstick, puckered up at myself, and then decided to wash my face and brush my teeth.

I came back into my bedroom, put on my pajamas, and pulled back my covers, probably just about the same time that the last breathe exited the victim's body, which laid within my line of sight.

I laid down in my bed, and nestled my arm behind my head, comfortable and relaxed for the first time that day and I breathed a sigh of relief, as the police were chalking the dead man's body, whose spirit was exciting him, two blocks away.

As I closed my eyes, helicopters frantically searched for the killer, as he ran maniacally through my neighborhood, past my building where I was tucked away comfortably, on the streets I often roam alone and drunk late at night.

I drifted off to dreams of a future and love and happiness and success, as the police knocked on the door of a stranger's house and told that person that his or her lover/father/brother/friend died.

That was two days ago. And I am telling you now. I wonder what that says about me, as a person.

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