Heels dangling over the edge of the New York City skyline, she climbed 1,576 steps just to see her life from the perspective of the streetcars below. 

A traffic delay on 31st street caused by the sudden deaths of three people she will never meet. A boy walking alone on 72nd and Broadway dragging his shoes across the pavement, considering stepping in front of the 5 o’clock subway train, but stopped by the sight of an old woman clutching a sack of groceries. A chewing gum advertisement plays in an apartment on 29th street, as an elderly man checks his downstairs mailbox to find it empty. He will die in exactly 156 minutes, but for now, the TV blares and the mailbox maintains its vacancy.

Death is a stranger we have known our whole lives. Her fingerprints on everything that fades. Life occurs simultaneously, or across the span of centuries, converging into the din: a symphony. The only prelude to silence.