The Blinking Line

I'm sitting on the edge of the building. Lighting a cigarette, blowing my smoke into the clear moonless night.

My feet are dangling above the noisy street below, as I watch cars go by, people go by, blowing them my cigarette smoke and they have no idea that they're being watched.

Nothing is holding me but the weight of my own body on my butt sitting on that ledge. My feet are dangling, I'm not holding on. And peculiarly, I'm not afraid.

I always wondered though, what it would be like to fall from up there. Sure, it won't last long, but what would it feel like?

Always makes me wonder.

I guess I'm not too keen to find out. If I were, I would have jumped a long long time ago.

And then I hear footsteps coming from behind me. I don't bother to turn around; my attention is still down below on the passing cars and people, wondering where they're coming from, where they're going and who they're going home to.

The footsteps grow louder eventually and this figure looks over the ledge where I'm sitting. With one acrobatic jump, the figure is next to me, feet dangling over the nothingness below.

"It took you a while" I say throwing my cigarette butt, trying to get it as far as possible to amuse my otherwise worried mind.

I light another, take a long pleasurable drag and offer it to you. You take it in silence, look at it for a moment and then you take a drag yourself, coughing lightly as you blow out the smoke. I look out to the dark sky, a million thoughts rushing through my mind. And yet I can't make anything out of it. I feel that I've got so much to say and yet I'm lost for words.

You give me the cigarette back as I'm banging my heels into the wall below, trying to conceal my perplexity. After all this unending, ceaseless and excruciating thinking, my brain went blank. Just like a computer, a blinking line expecting you to say something, write something, continue the thought process, my mind has been reduced to nothing but a blinking line on a white clear page.

*blink blink blink*

Nope. Still nothing.

Your voice breaks the silence that has fallen between us "It's so dark".

I finally turn around and look at your face. Study it for a moment. Taking a mental picture of the moment, the feeling, the sense of it. And then, still holding the cigarette, I reach out and touch your face. You smile; that little smile of mild embarrassment of the intimacy of such a gesture and that little smile of pleasure, for exactly the same reason.

"What happens if we slip and fall?" I ask you.

"We die" you say.

A moment. Then... you lean... I mirror your movement. And you kiss me.

And all of a sudden, like some rush of panic has washed over me, I grab onto the ledge with both my hands, holding on for dear life oh-so-tightly.

And the blinking line abruptly vanishes.