Patchwork

In my mind, I have lived one hundred different lives.

I don’t quite know why that is occurring to me now, but as I reach for my lighter I can hear and see those words very clearly. I have lived one hundred different lives.

My lighter is bright yellow, I probably stole it from someone at some point, I would never willingly buy something this color. The cigarette is hanging from my lips, my throat already burns more than it should, but I want to enjoy this view for a while longer before I start my car and this gives me an excuse to stay a little more. It is a starry night after all, I don’t remember the last time I saw one.

I am in a forest park, right in the middle of the city, which makes it the perfect place to watch the night lights.

I light my cigarette.

It is so wonderfully quiet over here, the type of silence you don’t usually hear nowadays. I can hear my own breathing, the little cracks of branches moving with the wind, even the tiny symphonies of crickets. Maybe life was always supposed to be like this, sedated by the stoicism of quiet, where there would have time and space for you to listen to yourself. What a strange feeling this is.

I’m pretty sure I used to come here with someone, but I don’t remember for certain who it was. After all, in my mind, I have lived a hundred different lives. Maybe, if I try and think really carefully, I can even recall I time where I was in love. But perhaps it has been too long, about eighty-seven lives ago.

I look at my cigarette, most of it is still intact.

Because I have lived one hundred different lives, it is difficult for me to keep count, to remember it all and piece together how I came to be here. I know I had the habit of dreaming a lot, that is how it all started, I imagined a new me all the time, I changed paths like people change clothes, I switched everything I could to fit a new version of my to be.

I hear people from a distance. I thought I was alone. It sounds like two people, they are talking, a girl is laughing. I wonder if they have been here for long. Oh no, maybe it is one of those couples, the ones that find secret public spaces to fuck in. First of all, that is gross, second of all, why is that the first thing I thought about? Can’t people just be in love on a park at night? Where has my romanticism gone? Maybe if I remembered all one hundred of my lives I could answer that last question.

They are going to pass by me. My cigarette is halfway done. I hate that they will see me, the lone smoker bothering the calm night of two lovers.

I can see them now. She is so pretty, her eyes are a light shade of hazel that remind me of brown sugar. For all I know, she probably tastes that sweet. There is a man holding her hand, but I turn my head. I don’t want them to think I am starring. I have lived so much, but I regret not spending more of it in love with a woman. I told myself I would marry a man, I wanted to get pregnant, to have the life I saw in pretty movies.

The couple walks past me. I can no longer see them.

How many lives do I still have to live to feel fulfilled? I am forgetting so much of what happened, what if that is my curse? Living so much I forget everything that has passed, and because of that I never learn from my past. Do other people feel like that? Maybe that is why I am alone, maybe I am the only person on Earth who has lives one hundred lives.

My past is so blurry; I wonder a lot why that is. Perhaps if I had more time, more time to live all of my lives, to enjoy every moment that would soon enough walk past me like a couple in a park, my mind would have time to remember all of it. I wished I could take pictures with my brain, ones that wouldn’t have just images in them, but smells, feelings, sounds. Then, I could remember how it felt to be me in a life where I was softer, gentler, a hopeless romantic, more aware of what I am means.

My cigarette is nearly finished.

I have lived a hundred different lives, but I don’t think that serves me much nowadays. I could change my path in another hundred different ways, maybe see a thousand different faces in the mirror, what a beautiful expression of what it means to be ephemeral. But I can’t enjoy any of it now, for I feel like I never have time to contemplate me or any of the other women I used to be.

Time could only be something we make up, then I could experience everything for eternity. Yes, I think I might do that.

Time may be nothing but a fabric we sew in between the now and a memory, and perhaps I can tear that up and retail some of it, make a patchwork of all the countless lives I have lived. What a funny idea that is.

I look at my cigarette; I imagine there are about three inhales left of it.

If I try hard enough, I can make this cigarette, this moment, these words, and all that surrounds me last for eternity. I have nothing but 45 seconds left of smoke, but that space between the now and then could last for forever, and this cigarette will be as infinite as time can be.

Maybe that is the photograph that I always dreamt I could take.

There are 30 seconds left.

The crickets do sound like a symphony, there are so many of them, and nature is so funny because they harmonize in syncopated beats.

There are 20 seconds left.

I can smell the earthy tones of trees mixed with the smoke, the pureness of the air with the choking scent of nicotine. I will feel and experience this scent for eternity.

Only 10 seconds left.

I will stretch these ones for forever, what a beautiful scene to live in,

There is 1 second