Writing Prompt: Rooftops

Hey guys,

I figured it might be fun to do a sort of writing exercise by all writing a short piece on the same general topic. I've picked "Rooftops" as prompt, so you can do whatever you'd like with it. After we each post we'll share some critiques.

Here's what I came up with:

Ben sat on the ledge, fifty feet above the sea of cars and pedestrians below, striding with purpose. Their heads were all bowed in a transitory sermon, praying for an impediment-free morning commute. The blonde heads were the crests of waves, the brunettes were the ever present, chopping waves. The grays were a salty spray. Ben could feel the involuntary inhalation, the deep breath of seaboard air, and the bitter-sweet sting in his sinuses.

Edith had yet to rise. Ben though it strange that in her old age she had grown accustomed to remaining in her bed until ten, if not later. She hadn’t made a move all night, all twelve hours of sleep. No hand laid upon his chest, no sultry kisses. That had all long passed. She had no sign of discomfort in her bed across the room, which was lit up with the ambient green glow of a digital alarm clock. The distance between them seemed measured to the inch. No one had told Ben that a man and wife stopped sleeping together at old age. Later in the day Tim and Meryl, the couple that they played cribbage with every Thursday, would knock on the door. Tim’s knock at two each Thursday, Ben thought, was as frail as the man behind it. He was a coward, letting his wife tow him around like that. Old age, Ben thought as he sat above swelling sea of heads below him, was about independence. It was about gravitating away from the reliance, to the kind of silent devotion that didn’t require expression.

Every morning Ben came to the rooftop of their apartment building. Earlier he came up, drank his coffee, and began to clean up the cigarette butts that were inevitably left the previous night by the ruckus-causing tenants on the ground floor. The heat of the beverage radiated from the ceramic cup. The wamth of the handle stuck to his hand. Then he hung his legs over the ledge, that insidious drop, and watched the waves of people ebb and flow with the time of day. Or perhaps it was the position of the early morning moon that pulled them from their beds, and the noon-time hunger pangs that washed them back out to sea. He sailed it alone, without a crew.

When he stepped onboard The Rose the first morning, the first stubble of his life brandishing his face, Ben was elated by the smell of the diesel fuel and the stained fingers of the men. The way they handled their knives. The skipper’s shouts, both insulting and ordering, but decisive. The smell of whisky. He felt scars at the joints on his fingers. The baiting of pots, fish carcass hanging from a hook.

This particular morning he watched for some time, seeing each nameless blonde crest or black morass of dark-suited business men. He smoked a cigarette, and when a small piece of ash fell onto his slightly obtruding belly, right on his favorite plaid bathrobe, he was delighted with how good of shape he was in at his age. As he took one more short drag (he never smoked, really. Just a few puffs every once in a while for nostalgia's sake) and then threw the butt into the watery deeps, he felt inclined to lay down upon the ledge. The thought didn't scare him, he had always been sure-footed, and if he were to fall he would certainly leave the world viewing the immense depth of his vessel's keel. He would merely be another man overboard, lost awash in the wake of a busy world.

As he laid back and closed his eyes, the light wind rushing against his ear (north-easterly) mixed with the bustle of the streets below. The smell of the sea filled his sinuses and upper chest again. He opened his eyes and the radio antenna that was erected nearby was a lumbering mast, and the door to the stairs a dingy and smoke-filled wheelhouse. The pitch and roll of the waves sloshing against the hull tinged his stomach. The wind scurried his thin hair, circumventing his scalp. She was a beautiful ship. He felt the hum on the engine, vibrations sent throughout the entire ship. The lacquer of the wooden wheel slid beneath his fingers. He loosened his grip. The wind knew where he would go.