Smoke

My reaction to younger people oblivious to the dangers of smoking is jealousy. Takes me back 15 years. Back when my only problem was getting out of the the gym and finding my empty pack pushed down between towles and sometimes not at all. Smoking after a work out...that first suck was the best suck. Sweaty, tired, high as a kite on endorphins, not a care in the world. Nothing mattered as long as I was lit up. Sweet rush of smoke after a hard sweat, I still remember. Colors were more vivid, wind was sticky or cool, and it carressed deep, oblivious places. Denial. My only friend. This went on for a few more years until one day death took an interest in me and we made a bargain; my lungs for his protection. But...Death is a big fat dick who never follows through on a bargain, which is really to say that he is a trustworthy killer, a hardcore fucker that Death, and so he entered and raped my lungs and crushed my spirit.

I finally got off the pavement and when I walked the 5 miles back to the bus station and I had mustered up the courage to look, it was then that I saw her face in my mirror; she was not the same kind, alabaster skinned innocent being, but a whore with a broken spirit and a broken face with shards of glass for teeth and she had made a pact with a Great Sadness.


For a few moments the jealousy teases me with threats of verbal violence and self loathing. I just laugh; the abstract theory of forgiveness, I don't fucking get it. Laughter, mockery, but only for a few minutes. I see the young kids sucking and sucking, and they see me through eyes of contempt. In a quick exchange we both know what we both don't want to know. There is no barrier between us and yet we're a million worlds of degradation apart.


I'm envious and I don't give a shit. They are merely my pain in younger packages. We'll all meet up one day.This time the walls will be the cement that bonds us together while we wait for medical care and hope.


I could edit but I like the brown shitty film Ambien knits together for such rare occasions. Blankets of comfort in the absense of cocoa.