Smoke

A long drag.....
Inhale.....
Feel the poison enter you, consume you.
Breath out your life and watch the evanescent wisps as they fade away...

A million thoughts weaved their way in and out through the intricate pathways within his brain as he sat there in his own desolate place by the flight of stairs leading nowhere. Weaved in and out and in again. Yet he did not grasp any of them. Could not, would not, should not. Another puff... Aah! Now he was thinking clearer! Now what was it he was thinking about? Oh yes. Life. What a terrible obscurity! There he was enjoying his childhood a few moments ago. He could still hear the jingle of the bells. The sourceless voices. The nameless faces. Some he liked, some he detested. Either way he could not tell one from another and did not care why. Could not, would not, should not...

The cold was creeping up again. Another drag. Vision steadied itself on its weary feet. Now he saw the playground by the stream. The golden leaves strewn across the dust-laden paths. Paths that lead to the white house in the field. The house where he played his first notes. The notes that nobody gave a crap about. He wasn't talented and he had no illusions about that fact. Yet was not the world itself an ungraspable, untangible, omnipresent illusion? All the roads that led everywhere and nowhere, people who said everything and nothing, seas that were vast and oceans that were shallow. At the end of the day did you not find your way back home? Home? Yes home...

He did not cover his mouth as he coughed out the last vestiges of reality. Then he drew another long drag. Yes home. The fields of innocence where he lay looking up at the stars. Were they not the very same stars that had promised to vivify his dreams? He had dreamed once. He had dreamed of a bigger house, maybe a mansion. A family that cared. He had dreamed of money. He had dreamed of his sweetheart and her buxom body and fulsome breasts that he never liked, whose ugly face he had long since forgotten. Yes, he was sure that he had dreamed. Yet these were the same stars that now gazed down upon him from their heavenly refuge somewhere in outerspace. Maybe someplace where dreams actually do come true!

Another drag! It was over. He watched the misty wisps spiral their way up. Where were they going? Maybe to that promised place in outerspace where dreams were harboured. He pondered over it as he watched the embers glow for an instant and then become cold again. Then he stubbed them out and collected the ashes, hoping to build them into dreams, give shape to them like that miraculous palace that he had built in outerspace. He blew out one last time and watched the ashes fly away....And the miraculous palace made of cards in heaven crumbled and lay in shambles at his feet.

The cold was getting to him again now.....He knew what would still keep him warm, keep him going....keep him dreaming!