The 10th Floor

I stay on the tenth floor,staring through a wall of glass,

watching people rush

as though every destination

is worth arriving at.

One evening,

I saw children playing on a rooftop.

Their laughter floated through the air

like birds that had never learned

what sorrow sounded like.

They looked up at me,

as if living ten floors above

must feel like touching the sky.

Little did they know

that some people in tall buildings

spend their days

dreaming not of higher places,

but simply of finding heaven.

I watched the elder sister

carry the younger one on her back,

as though love

weighed nothing at all.

I watched little feet

race towards the swings,

stretching childhood

into an endless summer evening.

They laughed

as if life were simple.

Little did they know

they had not yet met

the heaviness

that adulthood sometimes carries.

Perhaps they dream

of glass buildings too—

bright windows,

city lights,

rooms above the clouds.

Little do they know

that sometimes,

the higher you climb,

the lonelier the view becomes.

Sometimes,

I want to run downstairs,

join their games,

sit on a swing,

and let the wind

remind me

what freedom once felt like.

Maybe,

for a little while,

life would feel lighter.

Though,

if I'm honest,

I don't remember

ever having a childhood

quite like theirs.

My phone keeps ringing.

Notifications pile up.

Voices wait behind the screen.

But I don't answer.

I keep staring

at the children dancing

across the rooftop,

moving as though

the world has never disappointed them.

I wonder

when I forgot how to dance.

When laughter

became something

I only watched

from behind glass.

Night slowly arrives.

The rooftop empties.

The swings become still.

The lights in the city

blink like distant stars.

And my reflection

appears in the window,

standing between

the world outside

and the silence within.

Tomorrow,

the children will return.

They will laugh again.

The swings will fly.

The rooftop will fill with joy.

But not the tenth floor.