When the City Holds its Breath

Dusk is the city’s magic trick. The hard edges of the day soften, the overbearing sun gives way to a bruised purple sky, and for a few minutes, everything holds its breath. The ghost signs perform their final act, fading back into the brick they came from. They were here, they whisper, and now they are not. It makes me think about the line between being a memory and just being forgotten. A fine line. A terrifying one.

Ever since the cemetery, a new kind of silence has settled between us. It’s not the comfortable quiet we had before. This one has weight. My family history, the thing I thought was my anchor, turned out to be a story someone made up. I feel like one of these old buildings—I look solid from the outside, but my foundation is a mess.

"There," Leaf says, her voice soft. She points not up at a sign, but at a zigzag of black metal running up the side of a warehouse: a fire escape. "The best view is always the one you have to work for."

Normally, I’d be the one to list the bylaws we’d be breaking, the potential for rust, the statistical probability of a horrible death. Tonight, I just nod. I need a different perspective. I need to see the map from above.

The iron rungs are warm from the day's sun. The ascent is noisy; every step is a metallic groan that echoes in the alley. We climb, past windows of dark offices, past brickwork stained with a century of rain. With every level, the sounds of the street—the traffic, the distant sirens—get fainter, replaced by the wind and the thumping of my own heart.

We emerge onto the flat, gravelled roof. And the city unfolds.

The prairie sky is vast, endless, a gradient from deep indigo to a final, stubborn slash of orange at the horizon. The streetlights trace the grid of the city, a circuit board of light. The dome of the legislature, the strange shape of the human rights museum, the Red River snaking through it all. It’s all there. Orderly. Understandable. From up here, it looks like it all makes sense.

"See?" Leaf says, her voice barely more than a whisper. "It's not so scary from a distance."

"It's not the city that's scary," I say, walking to the ledge, keeping a safe distance. "It's the bit right here." I tap my chest. "This part. The part that has to go down there and live in it."

The usual witty retort doesn't come. She just stands beside me, and we watch the last of the light drain from the world.

An Outstretched Hand

"All that talk," I say to the skyline, "about five-year plans and legacies and building something permanent. It's not about success, Leaf. Not really."

"What is it about, then?"

I take a breath. The air is cooler up here. "It's about not being a ghost sign. It's about not having your entire life's work fade into the brick until people have to squint to see you were ever there at all. The cemetery... it just made me realize that even the stories I thought were permanent can be erased. Or were never true to begin with. What if I just... disappear? What if I make no mark at all?"

The silence that follows is huge. It’s as big as the sky. I've never said this to anyone. I've barely admitted it to myself.

Leaf doesn't say "That's silly" or "Don't worry." She doesn't offer a cheap solution. She just looks at me, then out at the million lights of the city spread before us. They blur a little.

Then, she holds out her hand. It’s not to help me, not to pull me back from the ledge. It’s just there, in the space between us. An offering. A question without words.