Four A.M. Roof Vignette

It's around four.

I think.

The dark will dissolve soon into pale blue, a serene warning of day. My feet dangle off the ledge, four stories up. My bag next to me, one beer left in it. My notebook is still missing but I'm writing on scraps of paper I stole from the bar earlier and they are scattered around me and I hope I remember to pick them up. I will forget and they will soon blow away, off of this roof and into the air, landing in trees and streets and nowhere. I see the metaphor, I don't care for it. I open the beer. Drink.

A world of dark forever and the soft, content hum of alcohol. Forever. Please.

Voices and I look. Two people hold hands on the road below me. Maybe drunk, but walking smooth enough. The girl pulls close to the man and rests her head on his shoulder and he kisses the top of her head and they are speaking, but too quiet for me to make it out. He puts his arm around her and I hope they feel that way tomorrow. I hope they feel that way forever. I would fall from here if I could guarantee them that. If I could guarantee them either one.

They fade into the dark and that cavern inside of me yawns and shifts and I drink.

I have unbuttoned my shirt and my hair is pinned back, wild and greasy, under my sunglasses. If I were to fall right then, it would be clear to anyone what had really happened. Four stories high, a mess of a person, scraps of paper.

Drink and my mind wanders and my heart remains still.

I slide back onto the roof, away from the ledge. It's time to leave. Wrong mood for a ledge now.

I pick up a few of the papers, and I thought there were more. I finish my beer and put the empty in my bag and find the hatch I crawled up here through. Lift. Get in. Climb backward down the ladder and hope my shoes don't slip and I go crashing down the ladder and then the stair case. It had happened a few weeks ago and for an instant then I blacked out and was dizzy for an hour but I was fine. The memory makes my anxiety flair and I shove it down. I make it to the stairs, and after a few flights, the door, and I slip out of the building into the fading dark. My head is swimming with envy and emptiness and a gallon of wine and beer and whiskey.

I begin the mile hike to my bed. I wish I had one more beer. I wish I had one more hour of dark. I...

Shut up. 

I shut up.

I walk and let the emotion drain from me and now I am just another shadow on the street. My eyes slide over the road and yards and trees and streetlamps and I see none of it. Distantly I am aware that the pale blue has begun and I am nearly home.

I see nothing.

From some window, from some doorway, from some roof, I may be watched and I may be wished for, and I may be fallen for.

Fool.

I crash through the front door and throw my bag across the floor. Go to the fridge and open a beer. The blue has faded and daylight is here. I stand at my sink and stare out the window at the backyard, at the neighbors back yard, beyond. I drink the beer and another and someone recently asked me how I am still alive, and I have no fucking idea.

I go to the computer and I write this.