by Sebastian Bilbo

MAN— Late 20s, hollow eyed, wearing a wrinkled sweater. He holds a cigarette.

WOMAN—Early 20’s, calm, composed. She stands a little too still, wrapped in dark clothes. 

Rooftop of a mid-rise apartment building. Just past midnight. A dim orange light oozes from below. Wind reverberates through loose metal. The city is laid out in front of them, throbbing like a mouth full of broken teeth. The door to the roof hangs open, but no one is coming through it. 

Man hovers near the edge, tousling the cigarette between his fingertips, looking down. Woman sits on a ventilation unit nearby, legs crossed. An oblique silence stretches between them.

Man:  “You ever think about what being forgotten sounds like? Like the air itself gets quieter around you?”

Woman: “Maybe you’ve been listening too long.” 

Man: (laughs) “That’s poetic.” 

Woman: “You started it.”

 The wind tiptoes around them, like it doesn’t want to wake anything. He takes a step back from the ledge, cigarette left unlit. 

Man: “What I hate is how much sense it all can make. It’s strange. I know, or at least I think I know, that it won’t stay like this. I could wait it out. One day, I’d want to. Probably. But my hands just cradle that idea like something borrowed, like I’d have to give it back the second I trusted it, believed it.”

Woman glances at him, unreadable. He lights the cigarette. Draws in, exhales, slow. The smoke curls upward like something leaving. 

Man: “I could handle forever. But the now stays, making me forget that. The suffocation in the smallest things, the breath that never seems to land. Every step in this—(softly touches his chest and meets the woman’s gaze, for the first time)—thing, is like pouring myself into skin that doesn’t remember me.”

Another drag. The ember pulses like a heartbeat pretending. 

Man: (softly) “I wake up and I’m already miles behind myself. I open my eyes and feel the weight of every conversation I’ve faked, repulsed by every mistake. I’ll stare at coffee and can’t even say what I want from it. I smile, with my teeth, my lines—but there they lie, warped at the edges. It’s like watching someone wear your face, laughing on cue, nodding before anyone asks, rehearsing your life, and getting just enough of the lines right. And then you shut the door. And it’s just you, just the echo. Everyone else moves like they belong, they fold into rooms, into laughter, into each other. I’m a draft in the hallway. A stain on a chair.”

He draws in smoke, steady now.

Man: “This is the only ritual I don’t have to fake. The rest—brunch, calendars, talking like I’m part of something, it’s all muscle without memory. But this?” (gestures to the cigarette) “My body still knows when I forget. Parts of me still wait, like I might round a corner and see myself standing there, hands in my pockets. Maybe I’ll see the little kid again. Smile full of soda and static, the shape of Legos pressed into his palms, knees bruised from nothing that really hurt.”

Woman: “Seems like he’s more real than you are.”

He smiles for a moment. Tired, but honest. The kind you can wear when no one is looking. 

Man: “Yeah, and maybe, I’d slip into myself again if I stayed still long enough. But the corners stay empty, every damn one. There’s no real orbit anymore, no signal, nothing pulling me back. Just me. Just fog.”

He gives the cigarette permission to fall. It glows for a moment—a single red eye, blinking out. 

The rooftop holds its breath, holding what it always has. The wind is busy sweeping his words away, and her with them.