Chagrin, she tells herself. It’s all about chagrin.

She finally understands the insistence of philosophers on human absurdity.

But she stands on the edge of the roof in ill-fitting stone washed jeans. The waistband is a vague gesture at her hipbone, those which cut like shark fins.

The wind picks up and her hair becomes a forest of chestnut kelp. It runs with wild abandon along her exposed ankles and billows her awkwardly cut sleeves.

She closes her eyes and turns her face toward the sun, the light burning through to create a bloody horizon. She thought if she refused the nipple at birth, her mouth screwed shut – she could avoid being tethered to this world.

The infant had become a woman who had been fed the lies of choice. Each choice was to be a step upward to freedom and enlightenment. The Ballot was to instill in her confidence that her opinions could change the world. The Degree to certify her knowledge. They turned her over and on her blank skin inked in nine numbers.

Curling her toes, she feels the sandy surface of the shingles biting between callouses. Her childhood games were preparation for adulthood. Play correctly and you will be rewarded. She was told that the wicked would be punished for cheating and her revenge handled by authorities. The reward for staying beneath the skirt was unthinking joy. They regarded the power of the human spirit with the same respect of as the urge to empty ones bladder. Uncontrollable, yet able to be channeled through the proper facilities with societal suggestion. Emotions now had labeled wastebaskets. The psychiatrists bin for madness, the doctors bin for sadness, and the jail bin for guiltlessness.

She touches the hollow of her neck and opens her eyes, her irises becoming silver wire in a mere heartbeat. The light swallowed her as she pitched her body forward, hands like starfish in the sky.

Forward did not indicate necessarily the empty stories of air beneath her, nor the solid safety of the roof behind her.

The one choice she found that they could not teach or steal from her was love.

And to her, it never really was a choice at all.

What was most important to her came like heat lightning in the summer’s haze. And try as they might, love was a hurricane they could not blow away. Still now, they plot, to break up vapors in the sky. But if love does not come as a raging storm, it will be the stream’s chilly current at your calf. And if they block the flow, it will always find a way to gallop through the bloodstream and straight to the heart.

Absurdity, she thinks, is the way they say head over heels. They want love to sound foolish. But she knows if she keeps her eyes on the sun, every direction is up.

Those stairs are real.

Those stairs go somewhere.

Find your staircase in the sky.

She buried her face in the crook of her elbow. Eyelashes sticky with tears and gummy from mascara fluttered like the wings of a dying bird against her skin.

She did not close her eyes.

The back drop fell away, crashing to the ground thunderously. The vibration shot painfully up her shins and stayed behind her kneecaps like troublesome nettles.

It did not matter where she went, for moments after arriving, everything around her would leave her behind.

Seconds before she had been surrounded by trendy, cheaply made clothing that hung from sari-wrapped walls. Hermit crabs twitched nervously in painted shells, shying from the tender fingertips of inquisitive children.

The music overhead was an eccentric blend of East Asia and techno. Only the continuous, hard and insistent beat of the drum soothed her. It was the only thing that felt human in this place. Everything else was coated in a thin shell of plastic, hardened chemicals from fast industry lines. Insides were bits and pieces of children that never got to play with hermit crabs. Children that would grow up with legs bowed and spines hardened like an arthritic fist.

Grief tore at her, but could not possess her. It reached, but could not grip, the stickers that announced discounted prices muffled its screams.

Inside everything was a story, but they were all stories she could not tell. They were butterflies she could not catch. Some of them would stay with her long enough that she could memorize the rainbow sprawl of their wings. Others the half second flash of a fishtail during dusk. Either way, eventually, always, they left her.

So like the stray cat, she wandered in and out of scenery. She tried to hurry before the walls fell. She tried to run before the sound of their papery wings alerted her to the next departure. She was second look, second best, the chalky line from where anxious runners began.

Carefully, she stepped over the broken habitat of the crabs, waded waist deep through poorly translated buddhist wall scrolls and onto the next scene.

No one stapled her blurry visage to light-posts.

Her first name was After, her last name was Thought.