slow burn, overdone

"You'll never know unless you try"---he handed me the cigarette and I handily proceeded to light it, the air was cold and I couldn't remember why I'd decided to leave home, or how my night, or this moment, had come to be. She was sheltered by a million hands and not too far from the darkened corner where a burning barrel was our only heat. "Go on", he said, "what are you waiting for"...I looked around and saw white smoke every time I opened my mouth to breathe..."I don't know", I said. There was an icy stare upon her face, but I knew it could not be that she'd deign to look at me.

The last drags were tragically stale, as expected, I tossed it and watched the flame turn pale---her head turned to the side as I flicked it, and in that instance I knew her gaze was mine, if even just for the moment, I was alike an empty field: through some convolution I had spoken beauty to her eyes. I garnered strength behind my limbs, as if by stray gales.

I approached the throng and tried not to react to the pressure in my chest...the taste of blood overcame the sensation of encroaching ice. "hello", I muttered, but came to realize it had only been in my mind, I was staring at her and in return was receiving the peers of thousands of predators. Like gaping maws of the earth, the steam of their inhaling founts seemed to gasp like a unified mass: her guards were weary that I was there.  

"Hi", she said, and intently glared---was what I imagined, before I realized the hundred steps that kept me from her royal corner. I coughed up blood, the red stain was the only color you could see, on the snow, anywhere. Moans came from the skies and it grew colder; the people were beginning to leave and my pal had fallen asleep on my shoulder. "Wake up", I said, and I awoke to myself standing before her.

    The senses entered my body once again, by this point, most were falling and many had long met their end: the perfect situation seemed to be calling and it seemed to be the only thing in the air I could comprehend. We were becoming alone but not feeling lonely, accompanying each other from opposite ends. Every breath became a love story, and every minor articulation expressed a love song...gentle in your sway, I walked like a quiet storm---brooding but moving ever forward---the ice chilled every slice of air but before me it stood shattered. Now I'm back in my corner and the cold has begun to wrinkle my skin---I'm still feeling sober, but I see black and blue just behind where the flesh is thin.

    Suddenly, I could not see a thing, I could barely hear, as if I'd lost myself in esteem---as if the passion carried me, and I hovered, overviewing like a flying sentinel, the unfulfilled, regretful scene. My future quivered, and failure plotted the dirt at my feet. I was stuck, in some in between, not really conscious, but having just enough presence of mind to be in a frantic scramble, to search for her with my eyes...and I saw her, ashamed, in the corner of the room. I internally screamed that I loved her, that all I wanted was her: when they picked me up someone shouted, "we heard you".

    We'd first met on college steps, I was smoking a cigar like a cigarette, and she asked if that was the only thing I did: "I smoke weed", was my reply. She smiled a smile I could not know would be eternally impressed, in my soul and every faculty at my behest, I could not know of the cold web yet spun. I traced her steps as she smiled past, illuminating a life I was just contemplating to end---alone---on the steps, where it all superficially began for the millionth time.

    "You look handsome when you smoke", I remember as if it were today, when she said so. I began to write, in her name and mine. All my hours, at her beckon, would take flight---with her, and off like starlings into the night. We were in the car. the windows were always up but not tonight, and the wind was blaring, and the music was yelling, and we were doing a hundred and a woman stepped in the way. The car screeched to a halt, before our train had taken a stranger's life away...and such the pages kept turning, that scars began tracing my veins.

    And I awoke, again in the haze...the steel prison was mocking me, the chilling air was causing distant clangs. Shadows joined in the mockery, and I swore their blackened faces wore white grins. I could see her perched over, as if she were disgusted with me, as if she were finally sober. Then alone, with no one finally around her, and courage encouraging my step; and my friend tilted over, to finally get his rest... I stepped forward. The pressure immediately became immense, I raged to conceal the cough in my chest.

    I was approaching slowly, I remember feeling my blood getting warm, her eyes looking at me in some unique, special, array: that a dream had seemed to have stepped in my way. I remember, at that moment, that I turned away in fear--- that you told me I was worthless ---I remember what I'm doing here, in this godforsaken cold place. All these tubes in my face; the eyes, of strangers, commonplace. The conversation I was just having, about living a life of fear, and about the cold bed sheets wondering. I remember seeing a smokey figure in the corner, with another shining figure in a corner diametrically opposed...and I remember thinking that he loved her, and that she him, but because of his fear, the only thing that could make it through the din, was, "you'll never know unless you try", and they served me my dinner, and I remember I am dying.