w&m by Anne Hills
©1994 Raven Heart Music / ASCAP

From Anne’s album Angle of the Light

I came across an article in The New York Times about a woman who experienced the worst kind of crime – at the age of fourteen, she and her 11-year-old sister were raped and thrown from the side of a mountain, her sister to her death. The rapists were about to be paroled after twenty odd years behind bars. Just prior to their release, her boyfriend drove her back to the scene of the crime where, out of his reach, she threw herself to her death. The song took a year and a half to write as I wrestled to find some hope or dignity in this compounded tragedy – not to glorify her decision but to find some grace in it. There but for fortune …

I always wondered what someone would do
If they had to live on after what she’d been through
You reach for her hand but she’s slipping away
’Cause the memories won’t go no matter how hard she prays

Over the bridge and into the water
She was always alone until the angels caught her
Striking like lightning but this time twice
Her body would hit so that her soul could rise

Did it play like a movie inside her head
Every wrong move, every word that was said
Victim of history, victim of chances
Standing alone where sanity dances … she went

I want to believe, I try to believe, I envy the people who do
I’d like to believe some peace was achieved
Some horrible wrong righted, too
When she went …

Over the bridge and into the water
She was always alone until the angels caught her
Striking like lightning but this time twice
Her body would hit so that her soul could rise

Here was the river, here was the track
What somebody took she was taking back