City from the Rooftop

Intricate as the grids on the back of your fist, the rooftops of the city: long lines of red brick, lattices of slate, a jutting chimney like a finger or cigarette, the anorexic arms of trees dotted about like thin hairs, here and there, and amongst the roofs covering offices like a trusted glove, you once or twice make out the thin grey strip of a road - like an indented little line, left by an old scar.

Staring over the fractured lines of the city, you finish your cigarette, peer over the edge. There are the looping acrobatics of the air, chasing this way and that, darting then circling back, straying and playing amongst the buildings as they like, as if a kid's fists exploring bric-a-brac.

You could join them in a step or two - but nothing in the city would catch you. Instead, the thin path back to the door, from the edge of which streaks the light of the warm corridor... back to the office, throbbing with electricity, which your fingers use to grope out to elsewhere. Say to you.