Tonight as I sit by myself and look at the darkness around me, I feel the warmth of happy memories wrap me in its comforting arms, like a drug trying to soothe the restlessness of my mind. I feel safe and sound in the apparent nothingness of everything around me.. Somehow, I have grown to like nights like these.. all alone on my couch with nothing but a dim light at the back of the house to help me see the little that I can as I make my way to bed early in the morning when the sky is still at it's darkest best! I feel like everything that I have learnt, everything I have come to realize over time, everything that matters, all comes down to nights like these. Nights when all I really want is hookah to drown me deeper into myself, into my mind and its thoughts, and even deeper into the soul I like to believe lives within me. It's on nights like these that I do nothing to fight my exhaustion, just sit around and look at nothing in particular and just think about everything, worthy or unworthy of my time...
As I let time pass by at it's seemingly sluggish pace, I realize that somebody, in another corner of the world, in another corner of this city perhaps is doing the same right now. Probably with a cigarette between her fingers,burning away to ashes as the occasional puff or two, as an attempt to purposely break a reverie of thoughts that seems to be going the wrong, more painful way ends up in a packet's worth of nicotine in her system. Probably with an unfinished bottle of alcohol in his hands, a couple of empty ones at his feet.. as the bitter taste on his tongue seems to compete with the bitterness that memories have created in him. Thankfully, I have never been the kind to need any of those when I need to break free or break down just to be able to piece myself together again as a stronger more,insensitive person.. someone who has one more thing to not care about.
These are nights I feel hope shatter into a million pieces, like a mirror thrown at with a heavy rock, as the uneven, course edges of the shards cut into my flesh of love, lust and longing and the wounds bleed nothing but faith which I try to keep alive everyday, because I like to believe it's keeping the world together. These are the nights I breathe air into my lungs stronger than I do everyday, trying to exhale the pain in my chest, let it out like a whooshing, whistling wind carrying dead leaves in the autumn. The vibrant red, the soothing yellow, the depressing brown and inspiring orange of the leaves seem to be colors of different aspects of life... aspects that come to life day in and day out.. until they all wither away one day into a dry coarseness, like the dead leaves that crunch under your feet as you take a walk in a park you haven't been to for ages.. the same leaves that rustle in the wind that blows the locks of my hair onto face as I sit here in the balcony trying to feel the life in the air around me...
It's on a night like this that I find in myself, room for new hope, new faith and another side of me.. that too one day will find itself in pieces that I will pick up only to throw away for another to discover as my past, whose remnants I will always fight to kill, to save myself the pain of nostalgia... Like the remnants of a past that I've been trying to kill.. And it's September already...
