“Do you think about me?”
I take a long drag off the dwindling cigarette between my shaky fingers, and nod, eyes glued forwards. Tendrils of smoke leave my quivering lips and evaporate into the biting wind like every hope and dream I’ve had since the world began to unravel. Everything is still and quiet, except the sounds of nature and the intermittent wheezing that could barely pass for breathing in the space on the bench next to me.
On our wedding night, I counted each rise and fall of her chest, fell asleep to the even rhythm of her breathing, but that lullaby is gone, replaced by the sounds of an obvious struggle.
Is it fear or regret clawing holes in the pit of my stomach? Or is it because I am praying to a deaf God for absolution because I know I will not be offered redemption? The sins of our fathers follow us into this life, and I was not spared, so I could not spare her. Some people in this life are dealt full houses, and I’ve often wondered how different an experience that must be compared to being born flush.
“Do you miss me?”
A pile of butts and ash is forming on the ground between my feet; discarded lifelines that haven’t managed to pull me back to shore. I’m down to the last one, there is not a buoy in sight, and I’m afraid of drowning. There is, at least, comfort in knowing that when the cherry burns out, when the smoke has all dissipated into the wind, I will not be alone once again.
Every time I exhale a cancer-inducing cloud, I hear a few rapid taps of a perfectly manicured nail against metal. Do I miss that? The sound of acrylic drumming against whatever was in her reach when she’d hear the lighter click, when I’d say the wrong thing, when she was biting her tongue? Do I miss the flutter of anxiety in my chest at the sound I’d come to associate with chagrin? I wish that I could answer, I wish that my answer would be anything less than deplorable, but I don’t, I just draw in another deep breath.
The only source of light within a hundred feet is a flickering street lamp and I try to focus on keeping my eyes held open despite the fact that there are tears born from the sting of doing so welling in the corners of them. I am afraid of what will happen if I close them, even for just a moment, or what I might see behind my own eyelids. There is horror not just surrounding me, but within me as well. With every drag of my diminishing cigarette, the air beside me shifts, and I can feel her move closer. Lavender, so calming and clean, is less so when mixed with the smell of rot; instead of covering my nose, I take another hit. She is closer now, exhaling hot, rancid breath against my ear.
“Was it worth it?”
In the end, nothing is ever really worth it, is it? Climbing the ladder higher won’t get you closer to heaven when you inevitably fall from it, and wanting to change the past does nothing but leave you with regrets. In the end, we all wind up with the same sickly smell attached to us, lingering long after our bodies decay, an acrid reminder of our fragility. A reminder I certainly didn’t need so soon.
Every uneven breath she draws is a tortuous process and each rise and fall of her chest causes me great anguish. Each exhalation of her putrid breath caresses its way down the goose-covered flesh of my neck and forces itself up my nose as if it were alive. My eyes burn, traitorous little droplets falling from the edges, because, even now, my body betrays me.
I just couldn’t help myself, and I damned the both of us. Blaming her is easy, blaming the past is easier, but only one of those counts as a half-decent excuse.
“Are you sorry?”
The better question, the one she should have asked, is do I feel guilt, or shame? It depends on your definition of those words, really. I am guilty. I was not compelled or coerced, I acted out of my own volition. So, by definition, I am guilty. I know what I did was wrong, and therefore, shameful. So by definition, I have shame. But do I feel guilt? Or shame? Does the absence of her outweigh the circumstances that precluded it so greatly that I would change it if given the chance? Her nails dig into the fabric of my jeans with intent, I can feel the sting as divots form into the skin underneath; I wonder, does this feel like anything compared to how she felt?
I can taste the filter now, sour and acrid, but I take another long hit, draw it out with a deep breath because I fear it’s one of the last I’ll ever take. When the light fails me, as everything does in the end, we are once again surrounded by nothing but the night and I find myself in the void. Seconds draw into minutes in my mind, become ceaseless. The world around me is frozen; the chirping of crickets, the soft rustling of leaves have both gone away, leaving only her strained breathing.
When the light returns, the air feels lighter, as if it is thinning rapidly, as if I am pissing it away with every precious rise and fall of my chest, with every long, unnecessary drag. A sinkhole of dread opens up in the bottom of my stomach because when I take the next hit the filter heats up my lips, and I can feel the burn of the lit cigarette between my tightly clenched fingers. She can feel my anxiety, I know, because the wheezing is quicker now, excited, and her tepid body presses closer against mine.
“Aren’t you tired?”
We are enveloped in tenebrosity once again as the light ticks off as if it is on some sort of timer, counting down to my downfall, but this time it is only for a fraction of second. I hazard a glance down to my knees, a quick, cowardly flash that brings me no pride in what I think to be my final moments. I see her dainty hand laid over my kneecap, nails dug so far in that, even through denim, it feels as if the sharp points are on the verge of breaking skin. Her porcelain skin, which I remember being so soft, is covered in unevenly-placed contusions, each in various stages of healing, they color her skin in dark purples and greens, edges tinged black.
“How much do you love me?”
There is a trickle of blood running down her arm steadily, I can see it dripping off her elbow, pooling next to her crossed ankles, next to the shiny black leather of her favorite heels.
I am certain that I won’t see morning, but I’ve known that since I heard the click of her heels against the concrete. When you love someone, you learn things about them, hold those things dear, no matter how silly or insignificant they might seem to anyone else. If I had woken up blind one day, by some cruel twist of fate, I would have still known when she entered the room just by the slightly uneven sound of her gait.
I can smell the heady, metallic scent of iron now, mixed with the flowery scent of her perfume and the stomach churning smell of spoiled milk. I fight the overwhelming urge to gag as my stomach roils violently against my last meal. I know this is coming to an end, just as she does. There is nothing left of the cigarette in my hand, it’s been burning my fingers for at least twenty agonizing seconds, but I hold onto it even as my flesh begins to smolder because when I let go of it, there will be nothing left in this world for me to hold on to. We are submerged in night once again, and as her tepid body presses fully into mine, she breathes a sigh that almost, almost, sounds like relief.
“Are you ready?”
I never had a choice. This is not a realization, but an inherent truth. I was born, and raised, to be ready, but Father forgive me…
I am not.
There is a sound like that of a hammer smashing into bone, it is as familiar to me as the sound of my own breathing. This is not the first, or second time it’s graced my ears. The cherry has all but scorched the tips of my fingers and I can no longer hold on to what could be considered my final lifeline to reality, and as it falls from my fingertips, the world comes apart. I clench my eyes shut, terrified that if I witness the ending of the world, I will remember it long after it is gone. There is silence, perpetuated now only by the sound of my own haggard breath, in, out, in out, in uneven gaps like the lifelong smoker that I am; and then there is so much sound that is deafening.
Slowly, but all at once, morning comes.