the smaller but perhaps most stubborn part of it

she died in police custody at an airport holding facility. my initial instant reaction, is that the tox report will be the illumination. It is a family of high-powered, high-strung New Yorkers. It must have been hard to live with those demands, and I can imagine the round top of the prescription bottle looking like an escape hatch, sighing it open to that release.

the next day they admit she was heading into rehab. alone. they must have been so ashamed, so furious. she must have been so ashamed, so furious, her final flight across the concourse darting and weaving like a bird trapped indoors, until she is netted by security.

I wonder if her credit card receipts will show a final swill at an airport bar, an onlooker in the women's room will tell of a final gulping of obliteration with hands cupping water at the sink, holding room surveillance tapes reveal the animal need to escape so powerful as to dislocate one's own shoulder.

Here is money, and power, and position, and choice, and none of it used well. I think of the people I work for, who are broke, and invisible, and confused by a set of circumscriptions that were never meant to provide any comfort. I am not sure how to define tragedy.