Tar and Courtesy

I fiddled with centering the bed. Like a new mother fusses with the blankets on her infant. Like an astronomer plays with the stars he imagines to be his. Skipping rope at every favor. Childhood rhymes purchasing our futures on credit.

Wiping the mirror. Cleaning the entire room with store brand Windex. Fragrant bursts of ammonia kissing my boredom. With a nausea so delightful only a poet could love it. The fallacy of living.

The drug. Sound in its dogma. The proverbial stitches. Coming undone. All the gods of the Greeks. Of the Romans. All gone. Relegated to myth.

All the gods of every empire proven false once history is written. Every god except addiction.

It's only easy when it's hard he said. Thick puddles of suspicion thundering like concrete thickening. In fragile tsunamis made of trust. You can hear them hardening if you listen close. A stampede of messiahs each as mortal as the one before.

Frozen eyes unable to blink. Stale headlights throbbing in the dusk of the televison.
Seeing highways where there were only parking lots.

If the answer isn't to be found in another cigarette then I am never to find it.