| Several things cross my mind late at night, when the candle flickers from the wind and the flame breaches the delicate paper of my favorite book, emotion escapes me. The ink fades and drips down onto the red carpet, the fireplace cackles, the night is crawling into my mind depriving me of gentle innocence. Sweet liquor breathing from my throat, the depths of my intestines, rushing out into the world like tadpoles. A stale cigarette on the edge of my lips clouds my vision with smoke, distorting my mind into a perpetual world. There's laughing outside, I can't seem to notice. There again, wondering, but thinking is not the thing for me. My friends are decrepit like the burning book to my side, the heat surrounding me like a waterfall. Enveloping my body into pure radiance, the upbringings of life spilling forth through my pores. It's not that I'm thinking, rather, feeling; expelling the old details of my life through smoke and darkness. My face is covered in shadows, my eyes burn holes in your soul, you talk but I don't have to listen, only respond. You take my words for the advice they're meant to be but they don't mean anything. They're useless, variant, pathetic. Like my life, yours, the earth's. You whisper something in my ear and the table with the book on it collapses, the fire spreads to the rug. A scream. Your feet thud on the carpet, detonating a bomb in my mind. You help me out of the chair, I drop my cigarette, I can't feel your hand. You care about life so much, so passionately. I wish I could. Outside, the moon high in the clouds, stars barely visible, you tell me you're thankful for all I've done. I question myself, "What have we all done?" But there's no time to answer. I light a cigarette and continue my journey through life, seeping blackness through my poors. I am evil in disguise, a wolf among the sheep. Seven years later you wake up to feel my eyes burning repetitious holes in your soul, you cry out but no one can hear you. I guess we're all a tad infected with the past then, aren't we? But why. |