You smoked a cigarette beside me
in the passenger seat of my car
in the dark, in the park one night
a lifetime ago.
You said: “We are born,
we do stuff
& then we die.
That’s all…
I wish I could, but
I just can’t make myself care
that much anymore…”
Spectral blue curls billowed out
from between the clumsy teeth inside
of your beautiful mouth,
& attempted to dance with those lengths
of false-coloured hair
you absently caressed.
You had an affinity for dysfunction,
you told me:
“I thrive among the broken things”
& I remember thinking
that it was fucked-up
how much I wished I was more fucked-up
than I already was.
I wanted too much:
I wanted your love.
Nothing else seemed important,
not the the future, not improvement,
not hope
or the vast tracts of free & unfettered time
that lay before us.
Eventually,
I drove you home.
Nothing much had happened
yet somehow it still felt significant.
After you had left me, as
I sat staring into the darkness,
the smell of smoke & your presence
lingered
& I was overcome
by sensation so intense,
that all that has followed since
feels like dull disappointment…
(This story is fiction, only the stories that composed it are true)
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