smoke

they told us a story about how they would close the bathroom doors and leave the shower on until the room was good and hot. steamy and heavy. then they would light up their joints and as they blew out the smoke it would settle around their heads, never touching the ceiling. they would sit and pass and puff and laugh and live in a cloud of smoke that never rose and seeped into their lungs with every breath and took them higher, higher, higher. the smoke that never touched the ceiling. smoke that couldn't climb the stairway to heaven, crushed as it was by vapor that they themselves had created to cage it. they lived in the smoke. it was their place. it was what they chose.

we would sit on the front porch with our fried chicken and cigarettes and smoke like chimneys, every one of us, bastard children with no place to be at four in the morning and nothing to do but light newport after newport after red, inhale and exhale, killing ourselves softly and feeling the burn we craved. it was what we chose. the smoke protected us and the smoke delivered us. for me, always so nervous, so anxious, it was hallowed: someplace i could always rest my hand, something i could always have to focus on, a small, insignificant thing to keep my attention and my sanity. it was the smoke, that choking and gray and beautiful smoke. watching it curl up and vanish after i breathed out, like seeing tiny little fractions of my soul disperse and wind around and around with every breath i took. they say one cigarette takes away five minutes of a person's life. but some of us will be dead in five minutes, and some of us choke and gnash our teeth and bleed out our lives in a seething cacophony that is only silenced when we drag in our breath and find something to shut our mouths.

to see the towers on the news after the planes crashed into them. some people swore the devil's face appeared in that smoke. they don't know that the devil has always been in the smoke, and always will be in the smoke. pass the marijuana to the left hand side. people, they make shrines and hymns and devotionals to the devil in the smoke. if you don't like my fire then don't come around. there is nothing new under the sun. the smoke has always been, and each little fracture of ourselves we breathe out comes together in the sky. clouds. we are the ones that made the devil's face appear in the towers. the devil has always been in the smoke, and the devil will always be in the smoke. we inhale god and exhale our demons. making clouds with every five minutes erased from our lives, our sacrifice, offered up to heaven. clouds. and rain will make the flowers grow.

i used to rub salt in my wounds. this is not a metaphorical statement. i remember watching straight and stone faced as the knife would saw through my skin. once was never enough. it had to be done hard, and back and forth, and again and again and again until the pain would finally roll in, sharp as dawn air, and the blood would leak out with each little drip drip drip until it cooled and hardened like magma. then i would spit in my hand and pour salt into my palm until i made a filthy paste that burned even my unblemished skin, which i then took and scrubbed my cuts and seared myself like fire. i'm gonna burn one down. the smoke was invisible, but i could feel it rising from the raging fire on my arms that stabbed and hurt and healed. i felt like i was letting the devil out. it's all we ever wanted, just to let the devil out. the devil that burns our hearts up with pain and rage and desire. let the smoke out. breathe in. breathe out.

to lie in desperation on your bed all alone at night and feel the hot tears falling thick and fast into your pillows and your hair and the miserable snot dripping onto your fingers. and let it rain. and then feeling the dark cloud roll in and overtake you, pressing into your lungs and suffocating you like black smoke. until the tears are dried up and the snot turns to dust and the despair is soft and cold and quiet like a tomb. was this really what we chose? this is our place. locked up in a dank dark room with the smoke floating around our heads, never escaping. breathe in and give up. the devil has always been in the smoke, and the devil will always be in the smoke.

we sinners, we always need to smoke after sex. and after we eat, and when we drive. we are guilty of being alive. cutting and cutting by five minutes each time, but we will live forever because we make the flowers grow. the lord giveth and the lord taketh away, and the smoke, it overtakes me.