The Rooftops Keep Their Fires

You can tell she didn't pick that chair for the flowers.
She picked it for the window, eleven floors up, maybe twelve,
the whole city gone soft and gray the way concrete gets
when there's too much of it to focus on any one piece.

Below her wrist, ink roses climb,
red as something she keeps saying is over,
green stems curling toward the crook of her elbow
like they are trying to leave the same way she wants to.
Real flowers wilt. Hers will not.
That was the point, once, needle by needle:
proof that a feeling could stay
even after the feeling left her.

Real flowers can't compete with that kind of permanence and they know it.
The marigolds on the table are already curling at the edges,
stuffed into a jar too small for them, water probably a day past changing.
Nobody's going to notice until they're brown.

Her tea has gone warm.
The straw stands in it like nothing happened,
like eleven floors do not separate her
from every stranger walking home to someone,
from every window in that gray sprawl
holding a life she is not living.

And the phone, face-down, obviously.

You don't turn a phone face-down
unless you've already checked it too many times and hated yourself a little
for checking again.

She turns toward the camera
the way people turn toward anything
that asks to look at them,
mouth arranged, eyes somewhere else,
already halfway back to the window,
back to the rooftops keeping their small fires lit
for families she will never meet
and never envy out loud.

The tattoo says permanent.
The flowers on the table say borrowed.
The skyline says none of this is about you,
it was here before the glass, it will be here after,

I don't know her.

I just know that's not a relaxed face.
That's a face holding still.

This is the picture that inspired me, and my description for Unsplash is Two Ancient Women, Modern Cafe. (Although there's only one woman in my chosen picture!)