It’s never fashionable to be the last man at a party. The sun, with his tendency to burn the candle at both ends on the wildest of summer evenings, knows this better than anyone; his tendency to stretch his capacity for fun and merriment to its absolute limitations making him wildly unpopular among the stars, moon and murk. As always, they impatiently wait for him it leave, longing to make the sky their own.

The girl at the window witnesses this elongated exit every evening, often perched on the ledge hours after the day is done. If her eyes, like all other eyes watching this nightly event, were fixated on the sky, they would have been able to read the it’s changing atmosphere by the passing colours: blue, the chilling of the room as it’s liveliness begins to dim; lilac, a visible dip in the sun’s traditionally fiery confidence; fuchsia, a rouge melting on embarrassed cheeks when the cosmos politely pushes for daytime’s end; concluding abruptly with a Scarlett explosion of burning rage and an abrupt exit from the ball of flames. All this astrological drama: ignored by the girl eagerly anticipating Oscar’s exit from the laundrette below.

Here he comes now! Her hand lurches

out, attempting to break through the transparent barrier between her and his earthly beauty. As always, she notices the black strands of charcoal scattered around his face, puzzling at the lack of ashy marks left around his already chiselled jawline. Then, and only then, can she move on to the eyes, which are filled to the brim with the dying remains of falling maple leaves. She smiles as neutron stars explode in hers, completely oblivious to the clawing fingerprints she violently paints on the window pains. In that moment, she wouldn’t have noticed the effervescent collage of genetic evidence that she had created on the glass over these last few weeks. Months. Years.

A stir. A murmur. He’s talking in his sleep. It won’t be long before he prematurely beckons her to their bed, as he has done every evening for the past seven years. The girl glances maliciously at the wedding band clutching at her ring finger, grimacing as she rotates the diamond one hundred and eighty degrees. She’s surprised to see that ivory has a shadow, watching as its elongated fingers fashion the cross of Saint Peter from the dust and mould emerging from the windowsill in the fading light. If she took it off, how far would that shadow stretch?