Hope

Dear C,

I hear a drizzle on my window. A weak wind is foiling the curtains. I lit a candle. It's flickering light is the only source of warmth, besides my cigarette. Yes, I'm smoking again. It fills my soul with stench, but at least it's warm. Akin to people's company. It smokes and shades over a rosary, and the figure of Christ lies next to me reminding me of my fall. I drank so desperately from the well of lies that it's hard to see why a cigarette would poison it. My hurt goes deeper. In my waking hours I can't escape the dread of solitude. It rolls in my bowels like an ill-begotten child of rage and sorrow. And all I do is wait for a tomorrow. I rejoice in it's promise. And it makes me wonder: does life boil down to this simple promise? I might even call it hope, for lack of a better word. Do I tread this dense and damp forest because I hope there is something warm lurking behind the next tree? Maybe I sniffed a scent of home somewhere, once. A scent of oneness, birth, I don't know what. I guess I'll never really know. But I'm afraid this scent stenches worse than a cigarette. It pumps my veins with boiling blood, ablazes every inch of my thickly layered skin, it fills this lukewarm bag of meat, bones and jellied limbs with a force of life - only to leave stinking ashes in it's trace. And even though I'm sick of the addictive cycle, even though it weighs down on my chest and clogs my throat, I can't but return. Something itches me. I go to sleep with the same damp joy, the same promise of tomorrow awaiting me after the nightmare. Perhaps my feverish dreams are more real than the waking hours I spend sniffing for a sense of home, oneness. "Is all that we see or seem, but a dream within a dream?"