Skyscrapers
Summers, I sleep on rooftops. Under smokestacks, beside stairs, in the sudden green of precarious gardens.
I love to lie when discovered. "I'm your new neighbor." "The landlord sent me." "I'm the ghost of the girl who died on the 11th floor." "I fell from the sky." I wear billowing white dresses and a wide-brimmed straw hat that throws my face into shadow. People are eager to believe me.
Sometimes I say a true thing. "I adore heights." "I'm very old." "I once lived someplace green."
A young man guessed once. "You're a nympho!" Only he thought it meant I'd come to make love among his potted ferns. He yelled for my secret lover to come out. "Ollie ollie otsen free!"
A hard change, inhabiting these glass-eyed steel towers. All angles. I am curves, like roots and leaves and tributaries. I long for beauty.
At summer's zenith, I stand on the edge and stare down at hard, distant avenues. There are no longer any gods to chase us from our trees. But there is always this way out, this dive into asphalt. Wingless flight would be beautiful.
Instead, I find a wide rooftop in the middle of green and hide in a sculpture garden. Tourists are everywhere, hectic with stares and wry remarks. A little girl with tangled orange hair practices walking pigeon-toed. She takes a cartwheel. Adults gasp. Imprudent! There is beauty here.
The leaves change. I don a sweater and descend from the roof. I roam narrow corridors with a mop or tea tray and sleep in offices on beds of paperwork. With the snow, I retreat to boiler rooms, completing my circuit from rooftop to roots.
They are trees, almost. Steel trees with leaves of glass and stairs for branches. New trees. And trees are always beautiful.
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Author's Note
This was originally published at Flashquake in 2007, and then released in audio at Escape Pod in 2008.
http://www.flashquake.org/archive/vol6iss4/fiction/skyscrapers.html
http://escapepod.org/2008/11/28/escape-pod-flash-fiction-contest-second-place-skyscrapers/
This is very intriguing! I like this voice a lot. I live how she loves to lie, and the lies themselves are great because they are so obvious. This is funny and great.
This is just wonderful. It is as if innocent hope exists within the daily swirl of the city yet remains just out of reach of the people. They see, they want, yet she cannot ever become their reality for they are too blind to the imagery of imagination.
Lovely.
Wow I did not expect the turn this took and how hard it would hit, Susan. "Steel trees with leaves of glass and stairs for branches." Strong work.
The dilemma of a mythological creature out of place plays as a nice metaphor for marginal urbanites.
Nymph... nympho... clever!
What a great opening, Rachel. The responses of the narrator in the early paragraphs are marvelous.
I especially like the middle section: "A hard change, inhabiting these glass-eyed steel towers. All angles. I am curves, like roots and leaves and tributaries. I long for beauty." Also, "A little girl with tangled orange hair practices walking pigeon-toed."
The transromation that leads to "They are trees, almost." works well. I like this piece.
sentence to sentence beautiful
This is fantastic and lovely - there is an ache in this narrator's voice, a longing ... it made my heart hurt for her. Excellent.
Love this.
Fabulous story, Rachel! I agree with Morgan - each sentence is beautiful.
You should expand this. It'd make a terrific opening for a novel.
This is a very imaginative story, really nice to read, you get the chance to be in each space with the narrator, which is a great escape for the reader, too
That last paragraph was just beautiful. It is a strong image that will stay with me, with any reader, for quite awhile.
Whoa. *Nice*.
Oh, so good. I especially love "leaves of glass."
I really enjoyed the language and trickery of character here. It reads, to me, almost like a riddle, and all along I was trying to figure what element or natural thing could stand in for her. Sunlight, I thought at first, but decided maybe heat.
I like the mystery of the identity and the obvious lies ... but I'm afraid I don't understand the title.
Very fun read. Actually sounds like a nice way to live (!)
otsen = oxen?
hauntingly beautiful.
and the image of "new trees" - this really moved me. and brought me back to a story i once wrote, it includes the counterpart image: the real trees as prisoners of the city asphalt (City Crossing - http://www.fictionaut.com/stories/dorothee-lang/city-crossing)
sometimes i wished trees could write.
My favorite bit...
"There are no longer any gods to chase us from our trees. But there is always this way out, this dive into asphalt. Wingless flight would be beautiful."
I have my own theory of what this story is about, but I don't think I want to show my idiocy by expounding on it here. Suffice to say, I like the implicit riddle in this piece, and having solved it for myself, it leaves me feeling uplifted. Thanks.