The sun is not yet in the sky, it’s lighting up from below, pulling out the blue so that everything turns to ice, even in summer. There are cars on the road, probably taxis, their headlights still lit, carrying people coming home from parties, their heads against shoulders and window panes, their eyes half closed.
And so she is standing on the roof and the world is coming alive.
The river is moving like a silent sleeping monster, and the city lights are going off one by one and there is a slight wind in the air.
Her eyes are closed. Her feet are bare and beneath it all, beneath the veneers and the pretense are her fears and now she grasps them in her hand, pulls them out from inside her chest and no, she does not throw them from the building, she holds on to it – the shaking shivering fear, the hot fevers in her hand, the trembling and the dull ache, she looks down on it and wonders how it ever came to be there, this serpent in her bones, this trembling hot furnace, so limp and dead in her hands now, she holds it close to her, brings her arms to her face, caresses this pain, this once burning pain and then yes, she lets it go, it simply slips from her hand and disappears and she looks out to the river and she opens her eyes and she takes in the city, already lit up with light, the road more busy and she is brave, she is more brave than she has ever thought herself to be.
She turns around, leaves the city standing in the sky, takes a deep breath and steps down.
