Blue

The world is big. He can tell. From his height, he sees the ground as one would see a movie screen. A bit too far away. A canvas to be projected upon. The height is just enough to take away the very awareness of height. The one chip in the brain which programs us to be careful has shorted out. This is not height, it wrongfully confirms to him.
It is cold and the wind is much too pushy, reminding him of standing against the rail of a ferry as it coasts inland. He connects the base of his palms to his temples and pushes them back, stretching the skin around his eyes into a squint to accommodate the wind. His surroundings blur until it is uncomfortable to bear, and he moves his palms forward over his eyes to warm his eyelids up.
He struggles to breathe as the wind forces its way rudely into his nose and lungs, stealing his breath. He must put his head down to root through his pockets, not sure if what he is looking for is actually there, doubting his ability to remember to stock his coat, and hating himself for not wearing a thicker one. At long last he draws out an orange bottle, warming up a bit with pride for remembering. Everything is pale up here. His fingers as white and blood-drained as the label. He tilts the orange bottle back, and then forward again, letting its menacingly blue contents rattle back and forth between walls and childproof lid.
He runs his thumb clumsily along the edge of the sticker on the bottle, but his hands are too dry and cool to get a proper texture. The pills are still menacingly blue and desperately shaking the bottle like a maraca does not make them disappear.
Seagulls join him, staying a safe distance away. The wind pulls their feathers in multiple directions and they shift wings to keep warm. One of the fowl begins cracking a shellfish on the ground, too soft-stomached to swallow its shell. A pigeon watches judgmentally from one of the short walls. He makes a face at the visitors, ignoring his pills for a minute.
He stares at the ground, at the wall too short to stop people from throwing themselves off it, at its pointless purpose. He stares at the city which has begun to disappear in white in the distance. The air gives the picture a pale blue tinge, as if it is bruised from all the still warm bodies falling like stones with a thump onto its sidewalks and quickly becoming cold. It is well known that the sounds of bodies falling on a drum is often drowned out by the collective noise of the city’s orchestra.
He knows the city below him is too blue. He knows deep in the recesses, the bowels, and tubes of the city, even in black it is too blue. Blue splashed on the concave walls. Blue dripping from between each bolt. He knows the world is too blue. Too unbearably blue. His prescription is blue. The doctor who gave them to him is blue. Every hand in the far-away low-wage factory which forged the bottle is blue. Every child who skipped eating that day because they had failed to earn their wage making child-proof lids was sickeningly, menacingly blue.
He tosses his prescription over the edge. His head is abuzz with everything the pills had once dulled again and he is home. Finally home in his own mind. He smiles and mounts the wall with one boot, then, keeping balance, the other. He stands out over the blue city, in a burgundy coat, in harmony with the world. The things that had him scolded and bullied when he was small were back and thriving in his mind, and he was free. Unshackled. He had finally managed to rid himself of the last small piece of blue.
He lets his smile get broader and shuts his eyes. Listening to the city’s booming orchestra, his heart races to the tempo. He knows it is coming to its crescendo. With a slight lean forward, he falls and then stops as he hits the drum. And makes the world just a little more red.