by Jayne Martin

The single, satin ballet slipper tumbled down, down, down the side of the building, landing on the city sidewalk below with barely a sound. There, among throngs of foot travelers oblivious to all but their digital devices, it was kicked aside several times before coming to rest at the base of a traffic signal alight in red.

From her precarious perch at the edge of the roof high above, the wind slicing through the thin, damp fabric clinging to bone, Carmen watched the rehearsal continue in the building across the street, just three stories below. Slowly, she untied the ribbons of the other slipper and wondered what more she would need to give for them to finally take notice of her.

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Jayne Martin’s work has appeared in Boston Literary Magazine, Midwestern Gothic, Blink Ink, Literary Orphans, Flash Frontier, F(r)iction, Sick Lit, and Hippocampus, among others. She is the author of Suitable for Giving: A Collection of Wit with a Side of Wry. Find her at injaynesworld.blogspot.com and on Twitter @Jayne_Martin.