The night is dark and seductive, per usual.
For the time being, I have peace. I have a few moments to myself and a freshly, desperately purchased pack of cigarettes to burn up my own barely thriving lungs.
My hands itch and crave to ask questions of my world, struggling to make sense of what exactly i’m living for.
What i’m doing here.
Back and forth battle in my mind, carefully hanging the hood of my sweatshirt (a friend in so many dark nights), lifting the checkered hood above my head to throw it over the smoke detector. Every policy and rule flutters through my thoughts.
Do not smoke. Do not burn candles or incense. Do not do this.
I weigh the merits of each, recalling in an involuntary shudder memories of fire. Memories of death by smoke inhalation and I can’t help but wonder if such terrors could fall upon me one more time.
Or am I worrying too much?
In a tiny thrill of defiance, I stand up upon my utilitarian chair, provided with the room. Stretched up on cheap nylon nubbed fabric, to rip out the battery of my smoke alarm.
And then I crawl across and onto my imitation-wood desk, sitting down and rethinking things.
Outside the window, my only view is the brick side of an adjacent building, a wall. Crushing my hips on the sill, I lean out, gripping with tight knuckles to the frame, in a reckless stunt. five floors down, so far down, I over and over and over again wonder what it would be to crash down that corridor.
The night is cool, dark and damp; the alleyway even more so. Brisk chilled autumn winds taste every inch of my skin like a familiar lover too long lost, it recalls a thousand memories, a thousand autumn nights.
A thousand more stories to go.
And so I prop open my composition-book companion, flush against my lap and begin. (Oh, where to begin.)
The beautiful thrill of lighting up that cigarette in my own isolated domain, my perfected box of a room. My hand starts without my mind, furiously scribbling in black ballpoint pen, the loopy angular script spreading itself like spilled ink across the faint lines of the page. One after another, questioning things that I had never thought I’d known.
The change of subject becomes refreshing and frightening, for one night an entry no longer preoccupied with the repetition that characterizes, especially, the past few weeks. There’s only so much to can pour out in terms of my old standbys. There’s only so much you can say every day, tearing yourself apart to no avail, insecurity and envy.
Depression anxiety loneliness wishing pounds pain weight body love lust lost.
This one track mind gets too tedious.
Rethinking my life as I blow smoke out the window in intent. Inhaling hard and thinking harder, salvation might not come through simple, concrete things. I need to take a long look at the way I live my life, I’m learning slow that change in self does not come through change of scenery. There’s so much to live, still.
The alleyway stretches so far down that I almost can’t breathe, looking down into vertigo and remembering the jump that never was.
remembering the girl I never was, and this is how I will be.
I will learn,
because there’s so much more to gain from ripping out the batteries and living without fear;
than forever living in terror of truly living.
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