[ON HOLD] LOVE ME LIKE ART

11

— IMANI "BAMBI"

L. CRAWFORD 🫦

CANNABIS IS MY THERAPY.

I don't need a shrink to help me piece the broken pieces together or to help me understand why life is the way that is. I don't need to jot my feelings in a journal when it bleeds.

Instead, I smoke.

I smoke until my eyes burn like the colour red, like the gory colour of freshly spilled blood.

The journey to self, specifically mine, is unconventional. It's twisted. It's destructive. I have layers and layers of trauma buried beneath the smoke, beneath the embers of my heart. I smoke, and as often as I do, because it lets me disappear. I feel like I'm Alice in my own corrupt wonderland, trying to find my way back to myself. It stops me from processing the grief, the bitter truth that I'm devastatingly lonely and the idea that my dreams will die with me. But even with shades of inebriation dotted in my eyes like a stargaze, my mind is like a playback of old cassette tapes.

Thinking.

Thinking about how the war, the emotional tug-of-war that was what my parents called 'matrimony.' A bitter note of silence knitted in emotional immaturity that stretched days. Months. Their dogged need to sometimes speak to each other with venom and smooth it over with love, as if that isn't chaotic. Or the grave instances where I flirted with death. I tell myself, reluctantly, that it doesn't matter but it does. I try to pose like I'm this woman, who doesn't feel anything but I feel everything.

In violent, strident waves.

It's like how I insisted to my parents that their divorce didn't shatter me when it did. I desperately wanted to stop the massacre, trap the bleeding. I wanted to do something. I mourned that day as though grief was a ply of rope buckled tightly around my heart. It altered the course of my life, crashed it on the fucking rails. Love wasn't this imposing, beautiful thing to me anymore, but a sea of irresponsibility, of tangible heartbreak and mess. So, the platitudes, the pleas, the grand gestures... they're better off staying in the drafts because hurt people hurt people.

I inhale a gust of weed as smoke pulses out of my nostrils, focusing on nothing but thinking about everything. I chase it down with my half-drunk wine glass as a rush of Pinot Noir quietly ambles down my throat. The lights drop low, as my front room is plunged into darkness. Rain patters against the window as Asake's timbre wraps around like me a blanket with his crisp resonance. He belts out the lyrics to Terminator with unfettered charm and I hum back like an enraptured groupie.

The front door gives way as the key turns and my eyes panel to that direction. Symone crosses the threshold of my apartment, her mouth stretched in a yawn.

"Where you fuckin' been?" I call out, as cords of smoke lace around my airway.

"Morning, baby.." A scratchy purr courses out of her mouth. She's dressed, down from her shoulders, in my musk green velvet robe that suddenly grew legs and disappeared out of my closet. I had a hunch that she was the culprit because she's the only one with access and the only one out of my other friends whose taste mirrors mine. She sinks into the plush fur of my couch, as a soft sigh drips from her lips.

"So, it is you that keeps rummaging through my shit?" I point towards the green silk that now melds to her tiny waist. It isn't like there's a thief on the prowl, interested in my silk and stilettos. The only thief is her big head.

She snuggles in the crook of the sofa, awash with guilt. "I'm guilty, baby but to be fair, it ain't like you noticed so keep it pushing."

"Tuh, I noticed." I blithely argue.