100 Dreams

Dream 7

I'm standing on the roof of the highest skyscraper in New York City. My feet at the very edge. It's nighttime, and you wouldn't believe how many lights there are. There's a reason it got the name "The City That Never Sleeps". There are people walking around the streets below me, but you can hardly see them from up here. People headed home to their families. Their children, wives, husbands, parents. People living out on the street, in mansions, in tiny apartments, or in snug houses. People living their own lives, completely unaware of my life, my pain, my problems. People with more important things to do than worry about a little girl with no father and a mother that's never around.

Maybe one of those people below is my mom. Maybe she's looking for me, calling my name into the midnight breeze. Sending her love through the chilly New York air. Or maybe it's my father. Never dead, just gone for a while, and now he's back, ready to be a family again. Maybe when he returns my mother will love me again. Maybe everything will go back to the way it was before. Maybe it's all the people who have ever loved me, here to love again. Maybe they're here to take me into their arms, into a warm embrace that I haven't really felt since my dad died. Maybe it's a stranger, searching for the exact thing I am. Maybe we'll connect to each other, be everything the other one has needed. Maybe, just maybe.

So here I stand, with my arms raised beside me, my hair blowing around, my feet at the edge, and my heart on my sleeve. The darkness enveloping me, the lights trying to increase my spirits, but dying out like everything else in this world. And I just lean forward. I don't pick my feet up, I don't jump. I just fall. And it's peaceful. Beautiful. And I never reach the ground.