Status: done baby!
Liquid Smoke
2
So many years later, there she was again. It was as if fate was not done with her, for all the horrible things she had done to the miserable, broken shadow of a girl.
Cigarette number seven...she counted. Her seventh cigarette of the day. It was 11:42 AM.
She glanced over at the large pack of cigarettes in her hand. Cigarette packs used to be smaller when she was in high school. It was funny how everything within the [heavily debated] borders of the country had been bloating recently. Including her. She wasn’t the pretty thing she once was, and she was forced to know it every day of her life. No more lifts halfway across the city from strangers, no more skimpy, flirty clothes, no more nightlife. She had magically transformed into plain Jane.
That is, if plain Jane had a little smoking problem.
Nothing’s been going right since A left. She strained to disallow her mind from saying the name. The wound was still as raw as it was two years, three months and twenty seven days ago. Like a child, she picked at the scabs every time they began to form, with all the cheap thrills, the one-night stands, the whores. Like a child, she held on to the thought that just maybe, one day, the woman she loved may return.
Like a child, she did horrible things to herself, so that someone would pay attention, notice.
Nobody ever did.
That’s what I am, she rancorously spat at the skewed reflection in a nearby puddle, a twenty-year-old child.
She still remembered the last year of high school. The days that nobody needed to know about. The day she approached her, at this very tree, where she lit [and still does] a cigarette every day, and told her that she knew the ‘secret’, and that she didn’t need to worry. She remembered her eyes, those sweet, baby blue eyes, coming closer to her, and out of her smiling, pink lips came the words
“I like you.”
Like; the bud of the beautiful flower of love. That’s what it seemed to be. When they were together, she slept on flower-petals; she smelled their dew every morning, taking a deep breath, making sure it was real.
And then came graduation. The flower’s fragile petals dispersed in the storm.
She didn’t say anything other than the one sentence.
“I’m breaking up with you” she had said. She looked her straight in the eye. Not bothering with goodbye, she turned, the black robes fluttering slightly in the wind.
And that was why she smoked.
That was why she was committing suicide in the slowest, most painful way possible.
She wasn’t good enough.
Not good enough for anything.
Cigarette number seven...she counted. Her seventh cigarette of the day. It was 11:42 AM.
She glanced over at the large pack of cigarettes in her hand. Cigarette packs used to be smaller when she was in high school. It was funny how everything within the [heavily debated] borders of the country had been bloating recently. Including her. She wasn’t the pretty thing she once was, and she was forced to know it every day of her life. No more lifts halfway across the city from strangers, no more skimpy, flirty clothes, no more nightlife. She had magically transformed into plain Jane.
That is, if plain Jane had a little smoking problem.
Nothing’s been going right since A left. She strained to disallow her mind from saying the name. The wound was still as raw as it was two years, three months and twenty seven days ago. Like a child, she picked at the scabs every time they began to form, with all the cheap thrills, the one-night stands, the whores. Like a child, she held on to the thought that just maybe, one day, the woman she loved may return.
Like a child, she did horrible things to herself, so that someone would pay attention, notice.
Nobody ever did.
That’s what I am, she rancorously spat at the skewed reflection in a nearby puddle, a twenty-year-old child.
She still remembered the last year of high school. The days that nobody needed to know about. The day she approached her, at this very tree, where she lit [and still does] a cigarette every day, and told her that she knew the ‘secret’, and that she didn’t need to worry. She remembered her eyes, those sweet, baby blue eyes, coming closer to her, and out of her smiling, pink lips came the words
“I like you.”
Like; the bud of the beautiful flower of love. That’s what it seemed to be. When they were together, she slept on flower-petals; she smelled their dew every morning, taking a deep breath, making sure it was real.
And then came graduation. The flower’s fragile petals dispersed in the storm.
She didn’t say anything other than the one sentence.
“I’m breaking up with you” she had said. She looked her straight in the eye. Not bothering with goodbye, she turned, the black robes fluttering slightly in the wind.
And that was why she smoked.
That was why she was committing suicide in the slowest, most painful way possible.
She wasn’t good enough.
Not good enough for anything.