Wonder

She was a fixation for me for a while, that girl in the sky.

When traipsing those city streets, you’d be forgiven for thinking that there was nothing but the haze of the filthy smog if ever you felt the urge to crane your neck upward. Not many people did. They were more likely to peer down and certainly not at each other. But if you were in the right place at the right time, a shape could be seen in the distance. The shape was like a person, a girl – a woman. She stood atop a slim pillar, which, like its guest, stood separately from everything else. She served as a reminder that there was still sky, still something there outside of this city where dreams came to die, or – if you were born here – probably never existed at all. Truth be told, I hadn’t looked up in quite a while before I first saw her.

One day, a simple long-forgotten head movement changed everything when, with a start, I noticed her there and wondered. I wondered about her a lot.

I hadn’t wondered so much about anything in years. What was she doing up there? How did she get up there? Was she there to jump or was she simply there to observe? She was barely visible, so I wondered if she could really see a whole lot of what was happening down here. Maybe that distance combined with that amount of camouflage actually made city life palatable. I wondered if I should try it too. I wondered if she was hungry, if I should bring her food; but how would I reach her? It became like a game, this wondering. I wondered every day, until finally it became too much.

I wanted to know.

I asked some people, a few friends. Some didn’t see her. I don’t think they wanted to see her. They promptly forgot. The people who did see all joined my game of wonder.

Wonder

Maybe it was some kind of scientific experiment, some said. Maybe it was an angel, said others.

News of the girl travelled fast and my commute to work became more interesting. More people began to look up, eyes squinting as they desperately tried to distinguish the figure obscured in the lifeless murk. Unfamiliar faces became familiar ones as they joined me in trying to interpret the business of our new distant icon. It was lovely for a while, but much like all lovely things in that city, it quickly came to an end.

One day, as I embarked upon my newly interesting commute, there was something missing: the girl. She was gone.

I stared and stared, as if doing so would somehow magic her there.

“She’s been gone since last night,” a passerby said.

“Who was she? Why was she there? Did anyone find out?” I sounded desperate.

An indifferent shrug and that was that.

I sighed.

I continued on my way.

I stopped looking up.