(254 words)

I would always panic because I knew she’d leave me eventually. And I couldn’t remember what I’d filled my mind with before there had been thoughts of her. I knew she didn’t love me.

She loved the roof. Black and dirty with old smoke and pigeon shit, it somehow appealed to her. It called to her, and she would stand at the edge and look down at night, staring at the car lights as if they were diamonds and rubies. Barely blinking.

She wouldn’t shiver with the cold, or sweat in the heat, and she wouldn’t brush the hair from her eyes when it tumbled into her face. I thought maybe she wasn’t really looking anyway.

You can feel it when you’re this far up. This height will echo in your bones.

We’d gone to a fair once. I brought her because I’d heard they had a jumping station. I’d wanted to ask her if she wanted to try it with me… I figured that maybe, if she Bungie Jumped, she’d get over her obsession with the roof. Maybe I could get through a day at work without worrying that she had gone through with it. I couldn‘t live that way.

She’d declined. She’d said it was fake. She’d gone up to the roof immediately after coming home and looked down.

“It’s different,” she’d told me when we’d watched the people fall. “How could it compare to a last moment?”

And then, on the roof. “You shouldn’t jump if you want to come up.”