ROOF

The railing was cold.

It had rained the night before, and Gwen had heard it the loudest – one of the downsides of a penthouse apartment in New York, she reasoned.

She hadn’t slept that night.

She had been thinking. Thinking about life. Thinking about her mistakes, despite how few she’d made. Thinking about what came next; what she’d do now that she had her degree, her apartment, and her 20s ahead of her.

Nothing had come to mind.

She stood atop the wood flooring of the roof, gazing at the skyline. Crows cawed in the distance, an avian choir awakening at once. Busy taxis drove madly through the streets, like blurs of that signature New York yellow. The sun slowly ascended above the east horizon, rising and rising, the city skyline set in front of it, beaming crepuscular rays into Gwen’s eyes.

She didn’t close them.

It burned a little. But pain was something she could tolerate. Hell, pain was what it had taken to bring her to where she stood, atop the world in the city that never sleeps.

Well, to be fair, Gwen hadn’t either.

She was in a position many would kill for, and many more would die for to give it to their children, or grandchildren, or someone else they loved. But she was here, and it was she who stood atop the roof of the towering New York apartment, unchained by debt or stresses. And yet… and yet… and yet she still stood atop the roof, her chilled hands clutching the railing as tightly as that one scene from Titanic – not that she’d ever watched it – she’d seen on the pictures, her dull, hollow, sleepless eyes shooting a piercing gaze at the cityscape across flocks of pigeons, swinging cranes, and a million other rooftops, albeit most of them devoid of people, and her stomach turning and tossing as though she was tumbling through the cold, sooty air, hands half-heartedly flailing, feeling for the steel support that simply wasn’t there. And yet…

…and yet she remained.

She stood silently, eyes peering like pilot lights, lost in loneliness and longstanding solitudes – perhaps someday she’d learn why perched solely atop the world, she stayed soulless and sullen, pained by lists of small, little problems she’d sought to solve, though seemingly they still perturbed her.

Why? Why was it that on top of the world, she still felt broken and empty somehow?

She clasped the railing tighter, chilled fingers frozen in their clutches like rigour mortis, unrelenting in her frigid calmness, relishing the fleeting, though forgone, thought that she’d combust and free herself by turning into fire and setting the roof alight.

Huh. What did she want?

She didn’t know. She’d wanted what other people wanted. She’d wanted love, which turned into wanting grades. She’d wanted happiness, which turned into wanting accomplishments. She’d wanted freedom, which turned into wanting success. And now she’d wanted all everyone had wanted her to want, and for the first time she wondered where she’d go next. She was young and the world lay before her to conquer. She was smart and there wasn’t a person her age she couldn’t intimidate. She was pretty and barely 22, and she could find so many more people to tell her want she wanted, but she didn’t know if she wanted them to tell her that, and to want what they wanted her to want – did she want that?

She had problems with want, wroth as she was to willingly admit it.

She was on top of the world, and still she didn’t know what she wanted or how to proceed. She’d spent the past few days in a stupor. Her degrees were framed on the wall. She’d won at life. Money, enjoyment, love, a phone call or a day trip away, and yet… and yet…

…and yet she remained, atop that balcony, going in circles and circles and circles and…

…she was spiralling, slowing down and speeding up somewhat sometimes, but she’d somehow always return to that same stupid self-destructive pattern, and she’d again find herself standing or sitting silently on that roof, staring at the sun as if it’d suddenly show her how she’d solve her seemingly endless problems and situations. And still… and still…

…and still her hands clasped the railing tighter for a moment, feet shifting slightly on the wooden flooring, before her tensed grip relaxed in defeat.

She swivelled around. It was a busy day in the bustling city, and she was atop the world staring at the parts of it she hadn’t yet conquered.

And yet, perhaps she’d remain on that roof a little longer.