Thick Clouds of Smoke
When my lungs are filling up with air and smoke and ash from the no-good cigarette-bums that fabricate around this establishment; take long drawn out drags of smooth smoke in, puff out little bits of grey-matter into the world, and flick the burning orange embers into ceramic bowls; I wonder if you can understand what I’m trying to say.
Can you see the weight placed upon me? Can you feel that pressure; can you understand it ever?
Lucas came by the other day to ask me how things were. He had his new dog with him, a brilliant little pup with golden hair that runs around his feet and tried to jump on on me and slobber across my face. He didn’t stay long, “a quick catch up” as he put it, an “I’m worried about you…” as he said it. Then his dog took off pulling him right along; he had that stupid pathetic fucking grin on his face as if everything in the world had gone right, as if everyone and everything was suddenly lining up with him. As if God himself has appeared through the grey mass of smoke and clouds and shown him the way to the promise land: the place of miracles. Heaven!
So I went back to that shitty place because I had no where else to go and because by now I hated myself. I went back there because the smoke filled in my lungs and got in my eyes and made them watery and red and gave me something to focus on besides the day to day to day happenings of someone without bloom. I went back there because it was the only place left for me to go; every other place had been opened up to the light of the world; God’s great grace had saved them all and they were now all holding hands in heaven.
I went back there because there they were all sinners. Because there no body cared; they just kept puffing away growing one more puff closer to death. There no one fought, no one struggled, no one tried. There everyone gave in and let go of their troubles in grey puffs of smoke that condensed in the room. There everyone was suffering. There, there was no dumb-ass dog trying to lick your face.
And it keeps filling into my lungs and across my chest and on-top of my shoulders. That great pressure you know? That almighty pressure that pushes down on me at all hours of the day; right there in that den of thieves and sinners; Right there a tangible representation of everything I’ve ever hated. I keep looking up the ceiling wondering if it’ll open up and God will show me the way out of this smoke; wondering if my lungs will ever be clean again; wondering if I’ll ever find heaven.
The embers spark again, one by one they all light orange; each one puts their cigarette out, lights another one, and begins the cycle anew. I look for an answer but the smoke’s too thick. My eyes are reddening. My hearts on fire. I’m suffocating, oh God I’m suffocating.
