33 FLOORS
He was born into a house with no light.
A father who vanished without goodbye.
A mother who came home smelling of strangers and perfume,
and who carried her anger like a whip.
At night, she learned to keep her door shut.
During the day, she learned that silence was safer than speaking.
Her brothers, supposed to protect her, became the reason she dreaded breathing.
When she told her mother, the woman’s lips curled into disbelief.
"If I catch them, I’ll deal with it,” she said.
But she never looked.
At school, the cruelty didn’t stop.
They saw the way she walked, the way her clothes hung, the emptiness in her eyes,
and they pounced.
Laughter in the hallways.
Books knocked from her hands.
Whispers about how strange she was.
She learned to disappear in plain sight.
The pain never left, so she numbed it.
Pills.
Needles.
Clouds of smoke that blurred her thoughts.
She didn’t want rehab.
Didn’t want therapy.
Didn’t want saving.
She only wanted to stop existing.
"Why was I even brought here?” she’d ask herself in the dark.
There was never an answer.
When she turned 20, she booked a ticket to China.
No one knew why.
They thought it was for adventure.
It was for escape.
The 33rd floor balcony was quiet.
The city lights blinked beneath her like a thousand indifferent eyes.
She thought of her childhood, of the hands that hurt her, of the voices that mocked her, of the mother who never believed her.
Then she stepped forward.
