Please Don’t Stop

Time is running out and while this is news to no one, I can’t help but wonder why. What is it we are so afraid to be up against, really? If it were the cold hand of death itself you wouldn’t know it because we live like we have all the days and nights and hours in the world to fuck around and figure things out.

He lights my cigarette as we sit in the back garden and as I inhale a deep drag, my eyes scan the new green buds on the mighty branches of the majestic maple trees which have towered over us for years now, and the house for years and years before we ever even showed up. Destroying myself a little bit here and there has become more of a hobby than a habit, though I am not entirely certain if this is progress or just the attempted taming of a sick kind of pleasure in self-degradation but nonetheless, I take my chances as though I had half the nerve to stare down the very face of god herself while mashing the dead smoke into the exposed concrete before lighting up another.

Sharing the whiskey and the wine as the sun is setting off to the sides of buildings slashed in orange and crimson rays, we talk about nothing in particular which would usually make my skin crawl but for this night, this evening which is just another among more than I ever dared hope, it all slides down warm and smooth with the heat of the bourbon and the sun.

Life is always burning. Burning on like the little lights which flicker in the early dark of morning, signaling that the people are getting up and ready to do whatever it is they did the day before and the day before that. Burning out like the electronic buzzing of the breathing machines in blue hospitals on the other side of a town soaked heavy in sorrow, stale air, grim coffee, and regular grief.

By the time darkness has fully fallen all around us, along with the druggy numbness of sweet intoxication, we have stripped off every bit of clothing and crawled into the bed which is each other, into the abyss which is the only way to forget that you are only escaping for a little while, and when the sun swings around the globe and the end begins again, small lights will flicker on and you will wonder why, with every bone in your body, you both cherish and loathe yourself, and yet you’ll splash cold water onto your weathered aging face, gaze into the mirror, and say a prayer to nothing you’re sure you believe in for just one more chance to do it all over again.