Cigarettes and Placeholder Dreams

Eighteen and hungry,

The cigarette hanging between bloody fingers doing nothing

To suppress the gnawing hunger clawing a hole in my stomach.

But its smoke is so pretty curling into the cold air.

It is cold isn't it?

Sometime between midnight morning and the grey afternoon now

I've lost track of the world and its heartbeat.

.

Eighteen and starving

For a good night's rest, a meal that keeps me full, and a scrap of hope.

I'm painfully empty and no amount of burning tobacco and tar

Can fill the void opening its ugly mouth in my chest.

Still, I breathe it in and wait for the burning feeling of faux satisfaction

To fill my chest and heat me up like the dreams used to.

Inhale, exhale.

.

Eighteen and greedy.

I just want, want, want a day without fights, a morning without screams,

A night that comes and goes without fists and liquor and brandished knives

Marking its passage with adrenaline and insomnia.

Greedy for love. Greedy for strength. Greedy for the mirror to work right.

Greedy for another inhale

To pump me full of warmth and sparkle in my thoughts.

.

Eighteen and insane.

The hunger went on too long, twisted into something unrecognizable

That ripped the soul out of me and exchanged it for the burning embers

Of a creature willing to do whatever it takes to survive.

A creature who lives on in hollow eyes still trailing the wisps of smoke

Curling higher, higher, higher

From the already lofty balcony of this clinical insanity.

.

Eighteen and crazy

With something deeper than hunger that claws holes into my soul,

Rips open my gaze and forces me to dissociate

Or risk turning into some monster I would rather not know.

I am lost in the madness, the smoke slipping into my blood and

Filling my cranium

With sweet nothings, whispers of what it could have been like.

.

Eighteen and empty.

Exhale. The smoke is gone but the shards of who I became remain.

Was it the tar in my lungs that shaped these sharp parts?

Who cares.

I am still starving, still stuck on a balcony looking down instead of up

But this time my carton of cigarettes is empty

And I'm looking for something to fill me with placeholder dreams.

___________________

Another part of the "Cigarettes and..." series. I feel like I've written so many of these I should probably say don't smoke. Anyway, rest are below.