Vital Signs

She belonged no where. And yet she belonged everywhere.

She never cared for smoking, but oh how she loved the way the smoke curled and contorted in the air and gave the holder an air of bitter-sweetness so contagious that you forget its decaying your insides.

The charcoal on the page captured the effortless wisps and Allison smudged the base of it with her thumb to create a smoky-shadowy effect.

She saw a man the other day.

He had the darkest of eyes and the coldest of smiles. He looked like a bar tender, but she couldn't tell from the street. His sleeves were rolled to the elbows, as all bartenders do, and he was lost in some train of thought. Seeing images and scenes that no one knew but him in the brick wall opposite of the alley way.

There was something in his expression that aged him more than the cigarette between his fingers. She supposed all bar tenders looked that way at some point. Idealized ones, anyway. Imagine, the things you'd see and hear in a bar and only for a part time profession. Only to go home to a small apartment, alone somewhere in the city. She'd seen plenty of artsy movies, she knew the stereotype well.

There was always something romantic about it to her. The sadness that seemed to flow in the veins of those hardened by the world. Which proved to be disastrous for her own love life, but fueled her creative fire more than any boy ever could.

Her pencil began to stroke the lines of his jaw, then his neck, and from there his shoulders (This secretly being her favorite part. For she had found both to be desirable traits from what she could see). As she went back to his eyes, she couldn't help but wonder. Wonder what he thought in this moment to make her heart long to recreate it.

Rain pattered on the window by her bed and for a split second the thought of him in the rain came across her mind. Just like those model photographs for conceptual pieces. She tried to think of a theme that would suit him best. Agh, what word could capture such hardened beauty? She hoped the answer would come as she traced out his lips and scratched down the lines of his hair.

Suddenly she felt her toes grow cold and curled them in. Tea would be lovely about now.

Placing her sketch pad down, she went to the kitchen and later returned with a cracked mug that had been glued together entirely too many times, and over the edge had a green tea tag hanging by a string. The cup warmed her blackened fingertips and relaxed joints that she wasn't even aware were stiff. But that was good. She liked the feeling of getting lost in her artwork. It meant for awhile that the world around her was non-existent, and that between graphite and paper she had created her own.

She returned to the man with the cigarette and stopped. There, there he was before her. Her hands had captured his features, his body, his emotion, and she thought such simplicity to be exquisite. She sat for a moment to admire her work as her soft indie music continued to play through her computer. A song came on in that moment.

Saturn by Sleeping At Last

The gorgeous violin intro began and it was then that she realized why her heart loved the idea of cigarettes, but hated them as a whole. To quote the Fault in Our Stars, it's a metaphor. Just as everything is a metaphor. She never cared for mainstream books, but couldn't argue when they were right.

You know the thing is bad for you, but you light it and allow the smoke into your body. Lighting it, placing it to your lips, it's the same as partying, as drinking, as hooking up with someone who means nothing to you after a break up, it's all a quick fix. That parts obvious. Those are all things she'd never do. Because she's too cautious, too careful. She thinks, always thinks. If she didn't she'd drown. She knew better. It wasn't being "good", it was called being smart. And it was there she lost many relationships. And it was there she thought it better to be alone.

She hated cigarettes because they're bad for you, and initially are bad habits. But what she loved was the way they seemed to cry out that everything wasn't okay. Those who held them between their fingers were those who silently wore their distress with tight cracked lips on street corners by themselves on shift breaks. And that feeling of understanding created, for a moment, a sense of no longer being alone. No matter how small. For it was the small things that made her life worth living. Anything big had always let her down or caused her pain. But her tea, the rain, her pencils, and that man taking a smoke break outside a bar had given her an afternoon that she would choose over a night out with strangers any day.

Sitting up from her bed, Allison placed her pencils back into their bag and held the drawing up to the clouded sunlight. The song in the background had changed without her noticing and seemed to play in time with the rain outside. Turning the pages she flipped through her sketch book and looked at all the people who had captured her imagination for just being alive. Each one a wonderer, she thought. For, as the saying goes, takes one to know one.