10:00 a.m.
Sketch: Insomnia
There's a curious way a cigarette burns in the dark. Or I say it's curious because I'm always looking for ways to entertain my mind in those early morning moments, the ones that could still count as late night if I had gone out and done something. If I weren't sitting in bed watching the burning embers come closer to my face with each passing breath.
My window is open, but I hear no cars, no voices yelling from sidewalks. It's the middle of the night after all, and people are sleeping, safe in bed, all is quiet, the way it should be, and I sit, thinking about the curious way a cigarette burns in the dark.
I am an insomniac living in a city that never wakes up.
I think about cigarettes and the way breeze ruffles my curtains and my sleeping neighbors because my brain is already tired of the alternative, the thoughts always waiting at the edges, prepared to take me over and make me remember want -- the thoughts of you. (Could this have gone in any other direction?) I have known you on careless sheets through nights when sleeplessness was a blessing, and it's always the times when I can't sleep that you come rushing back, taking me over in the quiet spaces between my own breaths, and there's not a damn thing I can do about it. Except to keep you hidden underneath thoughts of cigarettes and breeze. Which I do. With precision.
I've had a lot of practice.
The reason why the way cigarettes burn in the dark is curious is because the orange tip is like a dangerous ghost connected to nothing yet promising respite for my impatient lungs. Or at least that's what I think for now. For now. In the early morning that could've been late night, if only I'd go.
There's a curious way a cigarette burns in the dark. Or I say it's curious because I'm always looking for ways to entertain my mind in those early morning moments, the ones that could still count as late night if I had gone out and done something. If I weren't sitting in bed watching the burning embers come closer to my face with each passing breath.
My window is open, but I hear no cars, no voices yelling from sidewalks. It's the middle of the night after all, and people are sleeping, safe in bed, all is quiet, the way it should be, and I sit, thinking about the curious way a cigarette burns in the dark.
I am an insomniac living in a city that never wakes up.
I think about cigarettes and the way breeze ruffles my curtains and my sleeping neighbors because my brain is already tired of the alternative, the thoughts always waiting at the edges, prepared to take me over and make me remember want -- the thoughts of you. (Could this have gone in any other direction?) I have known you on careless sheets through nights when sleeplessness was a blessing, and it's always the times when I can't sleep that you come rushing back, taking me over in the quiet spaces between my own breaths, and there's not a damn thing I can do about it. Except to keep you hidden underneath thoughts of cigarettes and breeze. Which I do. With precision.
I've had a lot of practice.
The reason why the way cigarettes burn in the dark is curious is because the orange tip is like a dangerous ghost connected to nothing yet promising respite for my impatient lungs. Or at least that's what I think for now. For now. In the early morning that could've been late night, if only I'd go.
