Walking by the window as I scale the building’s mountainside, I collide my eyes with a passerby plummeting to the pavement. In days gone by, nets fished the sky to catch careening souls like him and save the city’s sunset blush. I push towards the summit, exchanging waves with bedded campers clamped to sagging sofas huddled for warmth around television sets. Leaning from her windowsill, a smoking woman smiles wincingly through bruised cheek mascara streaks. “Nice day for it”, she absently remarks. I agree with a nod as on I plod up edifice of concrete Everest. Light grows dimmer, air gets thinner, simmering heat rises feebly from streets, too far below, out of reach. Close behind me the shrill screech of a red kite on the run, shaken from dihedral scavenging by mobbing crows defending nests. Smoke from weed and burnt toast offering billows from a window on the topmost floor. Pushing through pain from punished thighs, I lumber over the rooftop ledge, to sit cross-legged above it all, so tears remain unseen.

(First published by Urban Scrawl)