Heartless and Disorientated

dreaming of addiction

i had a dream i found a cigarette on the sidewalk

unused and unlit

it must have fallen from some stranger's pack

so i picked up it up and put it in my pocket.

yet another thing to add to the list of things i needed for no reason at all other than the fact that i'm just a lost cause.

when i got home that day i took the lighter from the drawer

and told them all i was going for a walk.

i skipped down the hill to the railroad tracks, the ones across the street you can walk under.

the ones that run over the creek, the one with no stepping stones to get across.

the creek across from the lake, carved from the earth by the water that spills from the dam, trying to to find its way downhill.

i had leaned against a piling of the railroad track, looking over the shallow water while my back was to the graffitti that littered the wall.

"where are we?" some of it said

"nowhere." it answered

this faded spraypaint from years ago has become my gospel lately,

the philosophy i live by because at least it tells the truth.

i took the cigarette and the lighter from my pocket, no doubts in my mind.

i watched the thin veils of smoke rise from the end of the cancer that awaited, and thought they looked like art.

the way they whisped and curled and faded into the breeze like a painter's strokes of watercolor on a blank canvas waiting for its purpose to arrive.

i let the smoke fill my lungs for the first time, an addiction i knew i had before i even let the lighter bear the flame that lit my demise.

i am the artist, painting my lungs to match my future and my sunken eyes to match my shattered soul.

i'm painting my very skeleton rising to the surface of my skin, because i've been waiting for this ending forever,

i never expected anything else.

even if i woke up before the cigarette burned away, i could still taste the nicotine on my tongue.

even if i was disappointed that it wasn't really there,

because i was just dreaming of addiction.

but sometimes dreams come true.

so lately i've been finding myself with my eyes trained on the ground,

searching for that stranger's lost cigarette, the only other lost cause

to fuel my hopelessness and make the sickness take me faster

i accepted my absolution long ago.

10/14/2020