The sky, bruised in shades of violet and ash, hung low over the city. Evening had arrived not gently, but like a quiet weight pressing on the rooftops and alleyways below. On top of one such rooftopâtwenty meters above a world too busy to noticeâa young woman stood at the edge.
She didnât flinch. She didnât pace. She didnât cry.
Her thin frame barely moved as the wind tugged at her faded dress, once white, now gray with time and wear. In her arms, she held a childâa boy no older than two, silent and still, clinging not out of comfort, but out of primal instinct. His arms wrapped tightly around her neck, as if sensing the nearness of something irreversible. His face, pale and tired, pressed against her shoulder.
They looked like one bodyâbound together by love, by struggle, by shared hunger, and shared silence.
The mother was young. Too young to be this tired. Perhaps 23, maybe 25. Her face wore years that life had carved without consent. Not lines of wisdom, but cracks of wearinessâof nights spent without sleep, of days spent searching for food, for work, for something better that never came. Her eyes, hollow but locked on the skyline, were dry. There were no more tears left to cry.
Below, the city lived on in its indifferent rhythm: headlights blinked, motorcycles sputtered through traffic, someone shouted over dinner, another laughed in a bar. Nobody looked up. Nobody ever looks up.
She wasnât angry. This wasnât rage. It was the quiet implosion of someone who had triedâtruly triedâand been met, time and again, with closed doors, cold stares, and long nights of wondering how to keep her child alive on a single torn blanket and one leftover bowl of rice.
She whispered to him. Apologies. Prayers. Promises she couldnât keep.
âIâm so sorry, baby. I wanted better for you. I really did.â
The child didnât cry. Perhaps he was too tired. Or perhaps he trusted her so completely that even hereâat the edge of it allâhe believed she would keep him safe.
But safety was a luxury she no longer believed in.
This wasnât about hate. It wasnât about madness. It was about exhaustion.
The kind of exhaustion that no one sees. The kind that piles up behind smiles, behind âIâm okayâ and âIâll figure it out.â
It was about standing in food lines. Sleeping on floors. Enduring shame at every welfare office desk. Watching dreams decay while diapers stay wet and stomachs stay empty.
She had carried it all. Alone.
Until now.
There were no signs posted on the rooftop. No railings. No net. Just the sky above and the street far belowâhard and waiting. Her hands trembled only slightly as she adjusted the boy in her arms. He looked up, eyes searching hers. And for a second, her lips quiveredânot with fear, but with guilt. The purest kind. The kind only mothers know.
She wasnât thinking about the fall.
She was thinking about whether he would feel it.
Whether it would hurt.
Whether he would understand that she had loved him fiercelyâbut simply had nowhere left to go.
And still, the world moved on below.
A man lit a cigarette. A bus rumbled past. Somewhere, a phone buzzed with another meaningless notification.
And twenty meters above all of it, a mother stood on the edge of vanishing. Not because she wanted to die, but because she didnât know how to live like this anymore.
Let this not be just a story of sadness.
Let it be a warning.
A plea.
Not all cries come with sound. Not all pain comes with bruises. And not all tragedies come from monsters. Sometimes, they come from a broken system. From silence. From poverty. From good people with empty hands and nowhere to turn.
Sometimes, they come from rooftops.
And the fall begins long before the feet leave the ground.
