Dusk over Paradise

Alone, at a balcony, far above thousands. Hearing the endless hymns of people, cars, and life in a metropolitan area.

A forest of ineptitude nature. False plastic lives all too similar to her own. The sun rose hours ago and now it's waning behind some tycoons tower of babel. She hated that it was there. If it wasn't there the dark, the night blighted in dark thoughts, wouldn't come so soon and it wouldn't leave too late.

Her nightmares have been getting worse. Some nights she'd feel herself move in and out of her dreams. The sensation of hitting the wall while she defends herself. The dress that's torn from her was the blanket she loved for its warmth. In bed she struggles against unseen eyes and arms that mean her no harm.

But right now, she is here, at her balcony watching the orange and gold-red rays cut through and between clouds. She can't bear the thought of looking inside with the lights on. Only when it's dark would she be willing to look at the home given to her. Handed off to her. A home she landed just because he loved her.

He stares at a sunset too far to feel real. The purpling sky shows a atmosphere bruised in night. He wishes that the dreadful thing, the inevitable barely comes true. The same outcome but something completely different. That's all he can take.

Time feels absurdly slow. Like it itself doesn't want to go forward and he wishes it never does.

Should night come what would be there to stop him?

What would hold back the tears of a man afraid of the dark? Tears in confusion and sadness. What could possibly stop their flow?

He prayed, and prayed they will.

In this azure, bloodied city, bathed in dusk's love; they are here. Worlds apart but under and in the same enclosed Earth. Neither can leave this place alone. He knows this, while others only guessed as much.

He stands there staring at the window, while a tower blots out the sun. He wonders why he's awake. Why he can't sleep with his stomach's weight ever growing. Should he shudder, should he lose focus, he'll cry and spend another sleepless night at this hotel he picked at random.

Only because it was so close and only because it had a little phone, with a number she knew.

She watched the bleeding clouds pass as time waited for her to move. As she stood there watching the hustlers and bustling people that she'll never know and that they never knew. She wondered when did it fall apart. She hated how it lasted forever. While it all repeated in her heart.

This sunset.

It lingers and stains the world. That ending that just started but had already fatigued itself. Overstaying it's welcome, the moments become years and years force the hate out of her. She felt like she aged, like her youth was spent and her body used beyond desire or comfort.

That blaring sound of life going about with or without her woke her from her pondering. It's night fall and she still hasn't seen or heard anything of importance. Was she being avoided or abandoned and ignored?

She couldn't care less. Anymore and she'd be the one crying. As night falls she turns and eyes the phone. The only thing the light still touches.

Muted and unsung in hours. It's no different than a one way transceiver at this point. She felt like she had no choice other than to take the first step. Make the first move. Even if it's out of nowhere. It was the only way to move time forward again, she knew that too well and he did too.

The phone rings and his stomach sinks. His palms shake and wet themselves. His throat closes and he can barely process the ringing as noise. His sense of urgency makes him trip as he reaches for it. He prays it'd be what he thinks it is. At the same time he accepts he'll be sleepless tonight again.

When he answers he will say, "Hey" he thought.

He tells himself he will. He says he will. He prays he will. His wishes would come true if he did and in that moment he pushes through the boulder in his throat.

When he looks at the sun, it blooms in red and yellow beams that reach far and wide. Painting the city, a lifetime away from his little hotel room, despite him being in it's heart, a violent red. This light never touches the sky leaving it bruised in blue and blackened. In the rise of a sick moon it looked as though the sun were a rose and the former, a lily. Phone in hand, watching the world stop, he prayed he was right about who had called him.

"Hey"

"Hello."

"..."

"I'm hanging up."

"Hey, hey, hey."

"What?"

"Don't say that. Just hear me out."

"..."

"I've been thinking about what happened. It's my fault for back then. I'm sorry, I'll make it up to you."

"Don't say you will, why not just do it? Why wait so long? Besides you waited too long. Aren't you over it?"

"I admit I'm not. I still fantasize about you. Us and everything."

"Then you still-"

"I always do."

The sun in its last moment pushes through the clouds, in its final beating beams of orange, it paints the world that never was, into a cruel summer. A summer that closes on her words while the sun looked like a marigold in his eyes.

"I don't love you any more."

The line rings and he watches the marigold sun bathe him in his sorrow and mourning. The azure, red and bloodied sky in its purple light barely makes the balcony he once wasted timed at, in a distance, visible.

The phone back in its place. Time moves again and his only thought is,

Why would she have made a call out of the blue?

Under the same sky, in the same city, roses and lilies grow but, only marigolds thrive forevermore.