This room called life is confusion. Its house has a thousand windows but only one view; a million doors and only one exit.
Sylvia has casually walked past the flashing neon three times, the throbbing sign that flickered between black and dark, the moment in that middle space that beckoned. She imagined the pause was emptiness. Not the empty of absence or of hollowed time but the more complete, the more complex state of 'never was' - the dishonest peace; the liar's promise to self that pain might end. It doesn't - you just hand it to others.
With each pass made, she always turned away, chose confusion instead of unsettled light- a comfortable cowardice I think. Or was it courage? The answer seems to rest in the angles cast from eye to tongue, so perhaps that single view has many edges.
This might explain the cuts.
But, of course, all wisdom is cliche, including "three is a charm" - which means Sylvia is staying, being also cliched. We all are, as seen by others. Some hold an aspect still unique, buried within their shuttered life, but most ... most just manage the pretence well. We are yet to discover which of these is Sylvia.
She has, however, decided to stay and there the irony rises: a month ago was the third vigil, not merely her last but the last. There will be no other glance toward the portal darkly, not past that point of unlit clarity, not past that instant of false freedom.
Since that night - when all silk was cast aside, when Sylvia knew that she wanted to be here and saw how she'd played an extrovert trapped in an introverts life - she began to live again, moved back into realms of sunlight and crowds. Not just those found here, in virtual, but those outside, those on the wide plain.
Yet, as firmly as this was done, the world turned silent and her shouts had no place to settle. Neither out there nor here within this narrow well of words.
When ready to reach for every hand once offered, she found them gone: confidence returned to meet with a world fallen shy.
There is no fault here, no single voice lost more than any other, just unfortunate timing that she would miss them all at once.
Yet Sylvia, sweet child of irony, will not be bitter, she is too busy laughing at how life can fold, at how a choice between a lonely crowd and a quiet one can come to a similar end.
Bronze trophy winner
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I love to read the comments almost as much as the story itself ... how serious some people take the pure enjoyment of the experience of reading and make it a chore that has to be "intelligent and insightful" 
