le perdu

Short days turn into long nights and I notice the birds no longer sing, their voices frozen in time. I spend every morning nowadays sitting on the patio shivering wrapped in an old blanket smoking cigarette after cigarette, each drag accompanied by the nervous clink of a zippo. I watch the world awaken as the nine-to-fivers scrape their cars and shake snow off their umbrellas and I look east and see our beloved mountains rising into heaven like the tower of Babel. Christ my arm hurts, I think I see the beginnings of gangrene. I hear your soothing whispers and they are reassuring. I can also feel the soft touch of your hand against mine as a torrent of realer than real memories wash over me and, predictably, I get swept away in the undertow. Old and cold. Dead and alone.

I need you now more than I ever have. More than I need this poison or the air I breath, or the feel of sunshine on my face.

If there is... heaven, I imagine it would be a successive series of images flitting across the screen, each beautiful moment we ever spent together flickering by in grainy black and white to a wonderful soundtrack complete with an orchestra. A soundtrack that sounds ancient and old and grand and cracked, crackling and distorted, as though broadcast across millions and millions of miles of wire... we're both holding cups half a world away from each other... and I suddenly realize this isn't heaven but hell. It's now. Here I sit covered in snow shaking from withdrawals staring at the mountain, desolation peak, rising before me. Here I sit, front row center, next to Judas Iscariot, and hell is cold and I keep getting older and I'm still trying to figure out why it is I chose to fall.

Slave

Here I am, hiding in plain sight. Exposed, raw, and riddled with holes. Eyes closed. I watch you sleep a hundred miles away. I crouch here in the dark smoking bubbling puddles - metallic rain clouds - so I can breathe as my chest caves and expands and shivers like a fish surrounded by air and still suffocating.

" So why do you always wear those ridiculous glasses?" He nods and waves his hand with a flourish.

" Ridiculous, how?"

" Large, they're large. Like an insect. And you always wear that black fedora... and those eccentric clothes, so old fashioned. like you're..."

" ... a traveler from another time?"

"Yeah, like a traveler."

" If you have to know," I mutter in a tired voice, " I wear this hat because I'm trying to blot out the sun. At any moment I could burst into flame and then I wouldn't be able to get high anymore and you'd lose a customer."

" Sun? It rains every single day here."

I look at the window, not out but at, at the thin blanket of drops. I watch them trickle into each other and merge and then slide out of sight. I weakly reach out my hand and press my fingers against the glass and outline their trails. I remember how I used to outline the shadows on your body as we'd lay in bed shrouded in growing dusk. Trails that would lead into other trails. Ends becoming beginnings becoming ends.

I turn and try to focus, " We all wear masks. Sometimes we wear our pain... we exploit it. Sometimes we expose our pain, our secrets, and this serves as an incredible mask. It's a diversion. People are stunned when they see someone like me but never ask what it is I'm hiding. And I prefer things this way."

" I asked."

I look into his eyes, " No, you didn't. I volunteered."

He smirks as he tosses the baggy onto my lap. " Fair enough, are you going to shoot up here?"

" If you don't mind, I'll be quick."

solstice

I turn up my collar and walk on as billowy winds race past in gleeful delight. Each step is punctuated by a hollow crunch and my feet grow brittle and numb as wet socks freeze-dry and liquefy throbbing toes. The streets are empty and I feel like the last person on earth - a lone survivor here in a nuclear winter. And I’m fine with it, I really am. I pause mid-stride and blow into my hands and kick the curb. It’s so cold and I’m so alone. I watch my breath and marvel in the tormented wind-dance, twisting and turning, of the never-ending onslaught of snowflakes waltzing down like confetti. Except… I haven’t won any prizes. I’m not the millionth shopper. And I didn’t hit the lotto.

The streets are empty and I feel so horribly alone. I look behind me and notice my tracks have blown over as though I never existed. And perhaps I never did. Perhaps I’m still in bed staring at the ceiling like a dead man counting cracks and cobwebs patiently waiting for Elysium as sloppy junk creeps up my arm, awake but lost in dream. Perhaps I’m passed out somewhere on skid row with a brown paper bag cradled under one arm. Or perhaps it’s summertime and you’re clean - we both are, and you and I are gazing into each others eyes and you’re telling me you can see our unborn children. And perhaps…I’m fine with it, or perhaps I’m not… as I twist and turn and slip deeper down through the widening gyre alone in the company of happy snowflakes.

To share this poison

It's funny, I think I've escaped you. Life plods on and I march in time to the dry beat, on and on. Seconds into hours into months and not a peep - a full night's rest and not a wink. No traces of this haunting pain and regret I've come to know so well. There will be mornings when I awaken and nary a moment passes I don't think of you but when I do it's a passing afterthought, like asking myself whether I forgot to turn off the coffee pot or brush my teeth.

Then, predictably, you come... blown in with the snow. I lay in bed and hear the hollow thumps and shrill whistles marking your arrival.

“If I said I want you back I'd be a liar...”

I don't know if you know this but you control me like a ningyō. You tell a story through my tears so sad and tragic. I've literally lost control of my own self, now guided by ghosts. Demons dwell in this hollow corpse and devil's are left to their own devices void of exorcism. I am empty and dead. A plastinate splayed on an examiners table exposed for all to see. I am a monstrosity even Mary Shelly couldn't have imagined in opium bleached dreams. I am a rickety Bunraku hollow man, it's true, and you control me with deafening skill and precision as the needle slides into a scabby vein. You pull back on the plunger as a swirling cloud of red dissipates. Tears well up in blank eyes and regret and hate and shame flick over in succession like rapid light-flared graffiti portraits.

It is you that guides my hand. I blame you because I am a fucking scared-shitless coward.

I no longer search. I have given up the search and now I can only wait. Either for death or salvation or damnation, I don't know, whomever finds me first. I wait alone here for you wrapped in a dirty torn blanket. I do not move. Here I lie with a skeleton smile and in my veins flow poison, and I am thankful for this poison as it continues these sweet dreams so absent of you.

And I know it is only temporary.