Gone. Finished. Done, gone, moving on, finished. Bridges hurtle towards the car, just skimming the tops of our heads.
‘Don’t smoke, love.’
Stub out the cigarette, roll
Down the window with a button,
Let go,
Roll the window. Back-up.
The words make a new pattern. Somehow they mean a few things at once and my mind absently plays with them.
I flick out the just lit lit rollup out.
I dispose of the cigarette without a flicker of change in my expression or thought process; I enjoyed rolling it more than smoking it anyway. Empty of any real thought or feeling, words echo and fill up the space between my ears with reverberations of the cascading road under the car, as I mutely observe the dry skin on the backs on my hands, so as not to notice the familiar roads fizzing past us.
Something strange- this perpetual waste and change. April is the cruellest month. It’s yet to come, and has gone before, long before me.
Waste. And change. Because you can’t keep hold of anything not solid, I observe logically. Would you want to? Probably not. But the constant change and - loss -(doesn’t miss) but hits you every now and again and sends you spinning yet still, and makes you wonder who you are, anyway?
…………..
A tug on the door handle and the return of the jolt rolled me over onto the pavement. Staring up at the sky, I wonder what I’m doing down here. I’m not drunk, just tired. It’s all blue... milky blue, with no definable clouds; they just blur into the solid mass above. I shut it out and exchange it for the darkness of the insides of my eyelids. With a sigh, I realise just how abnormal this probably looks, and grudgingly pull myself forwards-and-up with my arms outstretched. I sit for a moment and then pull myself up with an imaginary ledge. A pause, for the blood to reach my head again.
‘What are you doing?’
‘Oh, nothing. Just..’ and I giggle.
It’s funny. What am I doing? It’s very funny, I have no idea. The incongruence between what feels normal and what seems normal wibbles, and makes me laugh. My laughing at it makes me laugh more, silently smiling and then wiping the grin off my face because I can’t be bothered to explain; I’ll sound mad. I couldn’t be bothered to stand up, for a moment there. Nothing drastic, just forgot that it was necessary. Very funny.
Up the steps, concrete. Up up up. Everything feels slowed down today. And suddenly rather funny. ‘Unreal’ I say to myself teasingly… unreal suddenly means something real because its what it is and what it isn’t at the same time, my mind overlaps to itself. I try not to notice.
The familiar patterns twist on the walls of the hallway.
Suddenly I hear music, and race towards the sounds, leaping two-at-a-time upstairs, looking for distraction, forgetting to observe,
but I waste,
and I change.
