your dog, but not your pet

An unsigned message, an unexplained number. Perfect grammar.

No doubt, something heroic.

The time could be symbolic, halfway between midnight mavens and morning risers.

Usually, this time of night would mean a rooftop, on my back and looking up. The higher the better; so too if less guarded. I saw a suicide once. Well, heard it at least. I’m not sure if those on suicide-watch wake early, but this one (He? She? It.) did. Didn’t notice me; I didn’t see it either. I could hear the scuffling of its feet, and then silence.

Sure, I was there for other things, but couldn’t help prick my ears up, trying to catch its motion. There was only silence, but I do think that I could tangible recognize the moment when it jumped. We were too far up for the sound of impact to waft through, but I may have heard an early siren or too a little later.

I’d like to think that it was a woman. She steps out, hovering perhaps, just for a second, on the parapet. With a delicate face and wide eyes and in the wee hours of the morning absolutely capable of bruising my insides.

And she jumps.

Another time, I was waylaid, spending tiptoeing through cracked ceramic in a cement park; unfortunate collateral to things unforeseen from the skies. It was a wonder that no errant being or amorous lover was flattened. Death by china – from Indonesia (or so the crate read).

Am I the only one? I’d like to think that there a few left (souls or otherwise) in the immediate city around me who’d at least want to know, if not need and crave, knowledge eked from the destruction of fragility. But on dull and dim but never dark weekdays, they only churn ever so slightly, rising and falling but never stirring.

None look up anymore. Who looks around even, much less above? Perhaps evolving parallel to the pervasive parochialism preached at the pulpit of modern society, the skies have been closed off from the modern world, or the world closed off from it, even as it was brought down to us, twinkling stars nestled within every tower, every night.

I miss my sky. I miss my clouds. I miss being in a position to look up during the day and see something other than stains on a false ceiling. I haven’t ever known looking up at night and seeing the world beyond this one, but I like to think about what it would look like.

An enormous tree… the branches of a tree, maybe, tipped with millions of orange and yellow hand-made paper lampshades.

Each with a flickering candle inside that, try as one might, can be blown astray, but never blown away.