Smokes and mirrors.

Cold blue night, tar sky out the window, red wine. I see forms forming in the smoke, the condensation from my breath dancing with the death of my cigarette. I see my future and my past, a fading image of these two things merging into a morbid sensation that rises on my spine, goosebumps taking over my skin. I see the lines of possibilities to all the yeses and noes of my twenty-three years on this earth. Many of my negatives should have been affirmatives and so is the other way around, my choices cutting deeper and deeper, my blood pouring and filling up the cup of my conscience. It's a never-ending torrent tainting my innocence but I never seem to notice it until I'm soaked. I catch a glimpse of my current reflection on the window, this image standing out and making me forget the dance in the smoke for a while. I see myself as someone else, my eyes blank staring in the distance, miles away from now. I could paint it, a woman leaning against a window, a half dead cigarette in an ashtray by the window, a cup with scarlet blood in one hand and the dagger of choices in the other, the blade gently tearing open her throat, the blood streaming into the cup, the white gown tainted.
Then I'm back again inside myself. I tell my hand to stop shivering and then I drink from the cup of my own blood, my own sins and regrets, my choices and consequences tasting like alcohol and burning in my scarred throat. Am I the reflection on the window or the painting that I never got to paint? Am I more than a tainted piece of clothing? Or am I simply what's left of the bloodless woman?