I had been built for orphans.  I started with only one floor, but after a few years, two more were added.  I was the tallest building in our little town back then.  I housed children for nearly thirty years.  I saw their tragic beginnings, their playful, chore-filled childhoods, and their goodbyes to all their friends as they left with their new families.
After three decades of nursing young children, they left me completely empty for six tedious years.  Days and nights blended so perfectly together as if time didn't exist, except for the occasional trespassers who only wanted to party or smoke.  Then a young business man bought me.
The wealthy man hired dozens of other men, all covered in neon clothes, to rebuild my insides.  They tore down every wall, they smashed down my delicate bricks.  I kept telling myself to crumble and crush them all, for the pain they caused was torturous, but the new walls they added to me were too strong.  My newer parts felt like soothing bandages on old wounds.
After I was reborn, I was occupied by people of all ages, mostly elders, occasionally a single man or woman with a cat or some fish.  There had been one little, old lady who brought her Doberman; it was amusing to watch such a tiny woman struggle with such a psychotic dog that was twice her size.
After a few decades of caring for adults and elders, more buildings were built around me. The small town I once knew became a city.  Over the years, I had seen many people attempt to jump from the top of the five floors of my neighbor.  He was the tallest building for miles around at the time.  I had been jealous of him; he had the chance to see their endings while I had been stuck for so many years only watching their beginnings.
I had been built for orphans, but it had been decades before I saw a child again.  He was four when I first saw him, and he only had his father with him.  His father immediately bought one the rooms on my second floor.  He had been a quiet child, he never played any of the games that the orphans had, but he was perfect just the same.  He had been the first to look up at me with admiration in his eyes.
For years, he lived off of cookies and bowls of homemade soups and casseroles made by some of the older ladies, who pinched his cheeks and said he reminded them of their own children and grandchildren, who lived hundreds of miles away.  His father stayed locked in the only bedroom, with the exception of his quick trips to the nearby liquor store.
He never stayed too close to his father - it wasn't like he had a chance, considering his father stayed locked in his room most of the time.  He always flinched at the movement of his fathers hands, and he always stood behind his father where he couldn’t be seen.
Sometimes his father would sneak out at night and not come back until the next morning.  On his way out the door, if he happened to catch a glance of my boy, he would push him to the other side of the room and storm out with angry tears, mumbling something about "looking exactly like her."  After his father left, I would always let the cats from the room above sneak through my walls to comfort his tears away.
I only took my eyes off of the boy once.  He had just turned seven a few weeks before.  His father had come home with at least two dozen beers and saw him playing with a toy car, given to him for his birthday by an older lady on the third floor.  His father slammed his beer on the table and stomped over to the boy, who cried out in fear and pain when his father grabbed him by the hair and slammed him against a wall.
"You!" His father's shouts turned into sobs, "You." His gripped loosened has he stared at the boy's shoulder-length, hazelnut hair.  "You have her hair," he turned his son around and studied his face, "and her eyes, and her ears, and her little nose."
For the first time, the boy held hope in his eyes.  It quickly turned to fear when he saw his father's sadness return to anger.
"Stop it!" His father had screamed as he threw the boy to the ground and stormed back to his room.
When he turned twelve, he met a group of boys in one of my alleyways when he was on his way home from a rare trip to the grocery store.  After his lengthy conversation with them, he left me again the next day.  He returned that day with cuts and bruises all over him, but he never asked for money from the old ladies after that.  For the next two years, he spent the majority of his time in that alleyway and out of my sight.
One night, when the boy was fourteen, many cops had swarmed by to a nearby building.  An hour later, they emerged with one of the young men that beat my boy.  He never went back to the alleyway.
Having been stuck inside again, he received daily beatings from his father.  After mere months of this, he tried to run away, but was soon found by a cop and brought back to his father, who promptly beat him after the cop left.
He began to spend every day on my roof.  Soon, he started sleeping there on warm nights.  Everyday, he always looked over my edge into the alleyway.
On his fifteenth birthday, after having been beaten by his father, he hid in the bathroom for hours.  When he finally emerged, he carried out the trash.  He carried it to the dumpster and threw it to the very back.  It was then that I decided to hide my dumpster at the back of the alleyway; if he wished to keep the cuts on his legs a secret, then I would do what I could to help.
His new routine carried on for a year.  I had never seen one of the orphans perform such a ritualistic routine.  Then again, they were young children.  I had no experience comforting an older boy.  Perhaps the cuts made him a man.  Perhaps the blood toughened him for the next round of torture that would always proceed the following day.  Was it the cuts that made him human?
He had started spending weeks at a time on my roof.  He would bring a dozen snacks, occasionally he snuck one of his fathers beers.  Sometimes, he would just stare into the alleyway.  Sometime, he would stand on the edge and lean forward.  I had not been surprised when he fell.  Many that had fallen from my neighbor's roof had survived; it wasn't often that they died.  My strong boy could certainly survive a fall from my roof.
I watched him fall that night.  It was so slow; he almost seemed to fly.  But even if his body could handle the fall to the ground, his neck certainly couldn't handle the clash against the dumpster.  His skull cracked, and his immature brain was splattered across my wall.  The sun rose, and the single lady on the second floor screamed at the sight outside her window.  Everyone refused to look at the scene.  Except for me.  I had finally seen the end of one of my children.