Still Smoke.

By: J.R. Harrington.

A dead bird in the swimming pool filter. The screaming of its mother, birdsong, sirensong of the water. Calling out to sailors: Drown, drown, drown in me, sugar. Sugar melting in the water, in the coffee you drink to keep yourself up through the night. Waiting for witches to turn your way, waiting for love to have its say.

The way flowers sit in the vases, dying. A simple poignancy in the water they drain from glass vessels. The undying blankness of your face, lack of expression turning into an expression of its own. It’s all truthful lies and blue skies, the clouds above parting to reveal that cerulean hue. Pink and orange in the evenings as the sun sets.

Hands that will never touch again, the way you used to be so touchy with your friends. Now you hardly brush your fingers against theirs, now you’re afraid to place a hand on shoulders. Pool water in your ears, pool water in your hair. Soaked in chlorine, remembering how the gas is deadly.

Going back to the basics, invariable ramblings on blank pages. Losing track of what you’ve already said, all those words and worlds. Creation, oh creation! It’s impossible to say what you have and haven’t done, impossible to keep in mind every work finished. Struggling to write for migraines and erasure, always backspace backpedaling.

The same music plays as a soundtrack for every work, every word. Burning feet on the hot deck, wounded and wounding. Threads wound around your fingers, tight laced. Straight laced straightshooters, the way you fall in love with them and they never love you back. Perfect girls with perfect curls ignoring your gaze.

Keen eyes and fair jobs, working hard or hardly working? Reaching out to touch the sky, reaching out to friends and wondering why they don’t reach back. Tuning fork memories, the sound of it hitting piano strings, the sound of it ringing. Staring into the face of sirens in the water, wondering why they don’t reach out and drown you.

Soft skin and mottled faces, red spots and acne scars. The beauty of it all. Every wrinkle, the way time changes you. Wondering if you’ll look like your grandmother when you’re her age, wondering if you already look like your mother. The way your father says you do, the way your brother says you don’t.

What’s true? Is it only you, fighting the world, writing and righting the world? Walking through alleyways and picking up cigarette stubs from the ash trays hidden behind the shops. Walking home from your friend’s house as the sun sets behind you. Stepping through town, a giant, one pace and you’re the next town over.

Bruised eyes from lack of sleep, you’re in deep. Reading magazines and waiting for the next to come out, excitable and apprehensive. All those submissions turned in, checking your email compulsively, constantly. A hawk sailing overhead, landing on the arm of its captor, its friend and foe.

Waiting for grandpa to come home so you can have more coffee. Waiting for something to inspire you, some remnant of otherness to lock down on the page. Waiting for the coffee to cool, waiting to swim in the pool. Heat and humidity, hot and wet tongues tracing scars on your wrists, on your thighs.

Wild and free, the world is open to you. An open book with blank pages, a certain look for certain ages. Coming to terms with your lack of ideas and making them up anyway, always the writer, never the one written about. Caramel colored fur and caramel colored coffee. Waiting on the rain to wash away the remains of fallen things.

There is peace in the stillness, laying in the screen house on the couch. For a moment you let yourself forget your responsibilities, for a moment every worry drifts away. They all come crawling back when you stand up and head inside. Brief reprieves and briefer struggles, determined not to befuddle.

A bruise under your fingernail, maroon-violet violence. Flowers swaying in the wind outside. The blurred lines between self and selfish. A pine tree, tall and strong, singing along to your silent song. The beating the keys take beneath your rule, the clicking screams they make in a quiet room.

Fond of family, the gentle pets your grandfather gives to the dog, the way he speaks to her and hums his laughter. Grandma’s stitches, black thread in her shoulder from the surgery. Running down the streets at night, laughing with your friends. Maybe someday, maybe someway.

Broken heart and broken bones, healing slowly. Damage and violence, telling morose tales to the therapist, in an uncomfortable little office. Running out of time for something or other, missing your brother. Sunbathing on the grassy knoll, waiting for time to take its toll. Always waiting for something, mark it on your calendar.

Curtains drifting with the breeze, monumental classical music mixed in with grunge. Expressive but crude, isn’t that rude? Hanging off the silver lining on the clouds, losing your grip. Birds chirping outside your window, audible over the music. Pretending the sun is gone and you’re the only one with a light.

Pointed remarks on painted ceilings. Rainfall leaking through the cracks, drip, drip, dripping on the linoleum. Hung out to dry, freedom, free verse. Verses of a song called life, revealing your destiny. Pain in your joints, wishing for relief. Carpe diem, seize the day, take it in your hands and toss it away.

Branded with the mark of the beast, cracking knuckles. Unrelated things weaved together, low quality melancholy. A hot air balloon floating overhead, and the dogs that bark at it. Songs that make you nauseous, skipped. A heart-shaped box containing all your worst memories, your fears and worries.

Pandora’s box, never meant to be opened. Complaints against cosmic things, the eldritch horrors in the sky, up on high. Or are they in the ocean—as above, so below. Dreams where you meet God in a bizarre bazaar. He’s impossibly old and playing chess with rubber ninjas and ginger gummies.

Cognitive decline from psychotic breaks. Terrified to lose your writing ability. Afraid that one day you suddenly won’t want to write anymore, and all this will be for nothing. That you’ll lose the time you made for yourself when you’re off in college, that you’ll not have time between school and work.

Grateful for medication keeping you sane, knowing that soon you may lose your health insurance. And God, you’re so sorry to be so nihilistic, but you can’t help it. They built a concentration camp in Florida, the whole world’s going to shit. There’s nothing you can do to save anyone, and it hurts so badly.

There’s no scale for this type of pain, the kind that comes from caring too much. Sometimes you wish you were more ignorant, that you didn’t have to see all this. The world is ending and there’s nothing you can do. The walls are crumbling around you. Reading what to do in case of a nuclear launch.

Biting your lips and biding your time. Hoping to be a part of a movement, something greater. There must be some purpose behind all of this. There must be a better future, one where we don’t have to struggle so much. A world without strife, bury the knife, perish the thought! A world where everyone is safe and truly free.

Anxiety and stress getting the better of you. Pulling yourself out of each funk, refusing to lose hope. Self-appointed cheer squad, keeping morale up. No-one wants to read more about how the world is ending, but it’s so damn monumental, it cannot be ignored. It’s possible that you will die before completing college, it’s possible everything is over before it begins.

But still, you go about your day, rolling in the hay and sneezing. You write your favorite pieces in a notebook for future historians, you ignore the pain in your legs. You live wildly, recklessly. You listen to your music and write your story, putting your life on paper. Fiction to reality, the free-thinkers warned us of this.

Stress-eating, stress hives. Itching and burning up, a fever, a fervor. Speaking aloud your worries, speaking aloud anything you can say to make yourself feel better. Healing yourself by eating a peach, juice dribbling down your chin. The tender flesh of the fruit consoling you, gentle flavor, softly furred.

Memories of the world before. Not perfect, but safer. Sounder. Face to face with the dying world, crying and wishing you could do more for her. Climate crisis, falling apart. Fires breaking your heart. The forests, oh the forests! The ocean, oh the ocean! Polluted and ravaged, destroyed and plundered.

Oh the world, the world! Stolen saltwater taffy from the supermarket and bee stings making you itch. Fireworks and other burning things, fire in the pit. Gun powder and colors, lit fuses. Unfinished loves and waiting for letters never sent. Tired till the break of dawn yet unable to sleep for your worries.

Your myriad concerns. Tantamount precision in unbreaking the words. Fifty beasts to break your heart, a hundred creatures to shatter your soul. Trying not to replicate a single sentence, trying not to plagiarize yourself. Ready for new beginnings in places older than you, ready to become some better version of yourself.

Broken hearted melodies, rhapsodic and free. Glazed ceramic on the countertop, taking up space. Pitting cherries and staining hands blood red and sticky. Pain in your foot from barefooted bee stings, pain in your ankle from nothing in particular. Just existing with your pain, trying not to dwell.

Macy’s fourth of July on the television, annoyed by the music and all the people in the crowd. Annoyed at the fetishization of insanity, oh the inanity. Waiting for fireworks to go off, the smell of roast in the air, the fresh air. Leaving your phone inside to sit by the fire and watch along the hill for the sparks.

Memories of the past, ma having her books taken away for misbehaving. She used to threaten to do that to you, but never went through with it. You don’t know what you would have done if she had—you probably would have just started writing something instead. Waiting on peanut butter pie, dreaming of the orange in the sky.

Reading essays and blog posts, wondering what you could write for the world. Itching your sting, scraping along. Remembering the plastic Jesus on the dashboard of your childhood van, the one you named only when it was going away—you immediately forgot the name. Sentimentalism on display.

A white dress sort of performance. The flannel that doesn’t match your shirt at all. Wishing you had thought to bring socks to embrace the sting on your foot. The way bee guts wriggle even though they’re torn out. The stinger gets in deep, and you need help pulling it out because it’s tender to the touch.

The old cherry tree burning in the fire. Memories of picking it clean each summer, bloody red sweetness rolling down your chin. White shirts permanently stained. The whole world rearranged without it—only a stump left, low to the ground. It burns glowing orange in the fire, there’s a hole in the center where bugs ate away at it.

Missing people on trips to Florida, Alligator Alcatraz. What a terrible fate, what a horrible place! So many things to worry about, so little time. The luxury of empathy burnout, the luxury of not being bombed. You’d rather be grateful for what you have than lament what you don’t, but they’re taking your health insurance.

Losing track of time, losing track of your rhymes. More than what you bargained for, less than what you expected. Free speech stripped away, propaganda state. Taking a proper gander at yourself, wondering if you’ll be sent away somewhere terrible in due time. For writing against them, being mentally ill.

The fear in the air makes the smoke stand still.