Young

I.I. Cigarettes for Breakfast

Part I. Hello, Beautiful

I. Cigarettes for Breakfast

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Someone once told him that sexual frustration was often a source of artistic inspiration.

Unfortunately, this piece of advice is of no use as he has no frustrations, sexual or not, save those concerning his steadily depleting supply of cigarettes. Besides, it is not as though he even has any recent accounts of a remotely sexual nature to reminisce upon.

Feeling sorry for himself (though mostly for his penis), he takes a drawn-out drag on his dying Marlboro and lets the wisps of smoke furl from between his parted lips.

The clock on the naked drywall reads 2:27 a.m., signaling that he has approximately four hours to wake up from yet another sleepless night.

Releasing a sigh along with an exhale of pungent smoke, he extinguishes his cigarette by grinding it into his filthy palette. He gives one last glance at the empty canvas that he has been staring blankly at for perhaps the past six months. Sighing again, he thinks to himself that it will probably stay blank for the next six months as well.

He shuffles to the bedroom, justifying his sleeping in his clothes and not brushing his teeth with the reasoning that both would be affairs of the morning four hours into the future.

Clambering onto the mattress and in between the mussed sheets, he manages to make himself comfortable despite the dull aches that seem to steadily increase in quantity and intensity with every passing year. With his lumpy pillow the right amount of firm, his arms folded underneath his head, and his left leg sticking out from under the covers to prevent overheating, he theoretically should be able to fall asleep within a matter of minutes.

Instead, he finds himself gazing profoundly up at the water stained ceiling. The previous tenant had forgotten to remove the glow-in-the-dark stars from the plaster, and a ring of faint, bluish light radiates out from each one.

His mind momentarily flickers, and the cellist soon creeps into his thoughts in the same fashion that the night fog crawls with little feet over the glossy obsidian surface of the ocean.

Were her eyes blue like that of those cheap plastic stars? Or were they more green than blue?

He chuckles to himself. He finds it rather funny that although he had once thought she was one of the most beautiful women that he'd ever had the blessing to cross paths with, he could not even remember her face, much less the color of her eyes or how she sounded when she laughed or whether she had dimples.

Was it truly love if he had forgotten so easily?

He remembers he liked her very much.

He still remains fond of her and the memories they shared together.

He liked the calluses upon her fingertips that she had earned through years spent slicing her skin open on the strings of her cello. And the way she always cut her sandwiches in half diagonally. And the way she would always twist her earrings while talking on the phone. (Funny how he can remember the tiniest details but whenever he attempts to recall her face, all he can see is an empty space crowned with a swathe of dark hair.)

At the time, he probably would have shouted to the rooftops that he loved her without an inkling of doubt in his trembling mortal heart.

(And she would have giggled good-naturedly at his silliness and then told him to get down from there before he went and broke his neck.)

But in retrospect, he lingers.

His eyelids grow heavy and soon flutter shut of their own accord, and, breathing in the omnipresent scent of his cigarettes, he lets the waves of sleep carry him out to the endless reaches of the sea.