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Smoke.
It billows up into the air.
The wind is cool, crisp.
Winter dawn falls over sleepy solemn souls walking alone.
No words can be said, no. It is too early for soft tones of gentle sea breeze to mist the air.
It lays thick; the silence.
I breathe out smoke.
I watch, calmly, like a bird with broken wing.
I say not that this is my perch; for that word is too heavy in my ears...
Yet, still, I hide away far above the others, above the world.
There is ice on my seat.
The ice crawls its way up my leg.
Slowly, sticky tentacles slice through my throat and burrow under my skin, squeezing around my heart.
It, my dead heart, is ice too, but it has been like that for a long time.
I breathe out smoke.
The tentacles recoil in disgust. Smoke.
You're killing yourself.
Disgusting.
Yes, I am.
Gentle grey wisps whistle through the air.
Crystallizing; tiny snowflakes,
Falling to the ground, collecting on the coats of lovers,
Down below.
I breathe out smoke.
I laugh.
Cold, bitter resentment
Lies laden low in the earth, the seeds of sin
Sorrow, tears breaking through the clouds and freezing.
Falling on heads, bruising, leaving only pain.
Pain and cold.
His heart was a furnace, it set fire to my very eyes...
We were, together, the hearth on Olympus, never put out.
Never ending,
My heart, so long cold.
Thawed.
I was finally.
Warm.
I breathe out smoke.
A dream echoes across the city,
Reverberating; spring sunshine, sweetness, souring slowly and subtly
The rain-clouds loom closer, eyes growing darker, the storm is coming.
The storm is here.
An old yellow van, once a home for one,
Then two,
Now one.
Far gone, back 'home'
To arid echoes, lonely single splitting shots
Echoing over spirits long forgotten.
A canyon, bright orange; a fire at his feet, ice cold.
Sun's reflection, shadows, a lone man.
It is dark.
He is alone.
I am alone.
I breathe out smoke.
Tricky Madame Time ticks on my watch, reminding me of how much time
Until my hours must begin, in the city of “love”.
The tentacles come behind me, choking me.
I can't do it. I can't do it.
But... they are mine, deep blue and royal and bloody like my hands
Never washed of their everlasting sin.
Contemplating, looking down; there hides an awakening street.
While he exists alone in warmth and heat.
All I have is a cold, lonely city.
People mingling, bodies brushing,
Impersonal. Frozen.
I laugh. An abhorrent contrast, yet, indeed, it rings true.
Smoke billows around me as I stand.
It warms my lips, my hands, my face.
But my heart is forever encased in titanium ice.
Footsteps shuffling closer to the edge.
Peering down.
I breathe out smoke.
There are no barriers, no scars here to hold me back.
In my mind, I am free, flying.
The railing, meant to tie me to the Earth,
Is behind me now.
Feet carefully tottering, expensive, worthless shoes barely finding purchase, a ledge to small.
Does it matter anyway? No.
I know he knows.
I hope he knows.
They know.
Fingers, pointing up.
Fear in brown, green, blue, eyes looking up.
In horror? I ask myself, though that would be a foolish dream to delude myself to.
No. It is, without a doubt, sick fascination.
Shouting.
Shouting grows louder.
Tipping,
Clicking.
Tipping.
Clicking.
tippingclickingtippingclickingtippingclickingFASTERFASTERFASTER
F A S T E R !
Sliding, creaking hands letting go. Leather sliding, slicing, screaming against cold metal.
My shivering body.
I breathe out smoke. Blowing up, far up.
Tentacles letting me go, sliding against my skin.
I see birds take flight from my red, burning hot cigarette.
Plummeting to the Earth now.
Smoke angels blossoming out of a summer garden in the countryside, a mother, sitting smiling, safe.
A boy, only five, startled.
Butterflies darting out of tall grasses, weaving intricately around him.
Laughter, soft, carefree.
Becomes blood. Guns. Vengeance. Bullets bouncing off of metal, screaming, war-ravaged, rage-filled voices.
Youthful vigor, though my days are passed, filling me.
Charge!
Soon evolving. Becoming soft, gentle words with an enemy; becoming what I daresay may have been love.
A lifetime spent in a few years together, freedom awarded to the grizzled survivors.
Yet Freedom is a dangerous and cruel mistress.
She will lie to you.
She will tempt you.
She will destroy you.
I fall, doomed to crash into the sidewalk below.
Warmth.
A hand, scorching, deep and rough and human.
I can't fall.
Leather against leather, hands gripping together.
Eyes, silver-blue like skies bellowing; storming summer ferocity-
Is terrified, broken, looking down on me.
He says something but I can't hear.
Blood roaring in ears once numb,
Music to the senses is his rough tone.
Tugging, I am putty in his trembling hands, he pulls me up and away from death.
I collapse into him, body tumbling into body tumbling away from darkness; half alive.
He is shaking. He is cold.
I am cold.
But our hearts are thawing.
"I'm so sorry."
The city of love, indeed.
I breathe out smoke.
The canyon is warm. I am warm.
My heart beats, red, softly inside my chest,
Sun reflects off of walls: deep, old,
Older than anything I've ever known or will know.
They are lined with billions of years of history- so massive
The infinite stars hold the same majesty with which our Earth can captivate the mind.
Not unlike me, these rocks are marked by death and destruction and remorse.
But they stand, unbreakable. Unsinkable.
I am unstoppable, one with all of nature, all of creation. It echoes within me, and I can feel.
Life flows inside of me; my very veins spilling, overflowing, with roots deeply set within the core of the Earth.
Ancient spirits fly in the arid air but-
But-
There is still no one around me.
Suddenly, noise.
Shuffling.
Once horrid tentacles, now soft, worn arms; wrapping around me, embracing me with
home.
Summer seasons pass, winters are never cold, and I am never alone again.