44 FLOORS

They’re screaming as we cling to the soaking overhang, reflections in glass cast off by the sun.
It’s strange now clinging to these moments up here, after all of the dreams where I’ve walked with you. Soon we will be beneath the muttering alarm of a thunderstorm, the soft rumbling sounds sweeping in under the sunlit haze, our reflections in the glass. Men with megaphones on the ground make muffled sounds with no resonance, the meaning lost amidst the fluttering of wings from a flock of birds just beyond our parapet.
Fire engines and flickering sirens scattered amidst the bottom crowds like the silhouetted clouds at dawns light, like horseflies through the eaves. You hold my hand, the storm up over us now.
“Est diu deorsum,” you say, voice caught in this high risers wind.
“Sic?”
Looking down at these dots of humanity, each one like a sparkling particle floating along the ocean. Our reflections in the glass, the hazy slanted sheets of sleet and rain, the wind gust like a gut punch.
Down below us the crowds call out for us to come down,
'come down from there, from your own perch above our perfect world’.
Strands of your hair whip around in the wind, scented streamers floating around us like a shield.
Swallowing, you say, “Esset adhuc vos?”
It is a very long way down, down to their perfect world.
“Utunam adhuc.”
Knuckles are bloodless now, white like the hands of a living ghost leaning out over the endlessness, the finish of rusty metal shooting through our fingertips with a savage electric surge as we are left wondering, Is this the last thing we feel? This metal railing? Is this it?
Your eyes close as the covering of the storm cloud crosses back over us, shadows playing butterfly, the fluttering of wings. Our reflection in the glass.
“Sciatur Quia Ego Dilexi Te,” you say.
“Scio.”
“Semper dilexi vos.”
Leap like a bird.
Fluttering wings.
Empty glass.
The earth is rising, falling down, tumbling. The distant ground seems to be opening, groaning.
The scattered crowd screams.
Semper dilexi vos.