Another part of something.

The sound of the heater at my feet introduces me to another phase of another life. I can’t imagine it being too dissimilar to a bullet entering your brain, smashing it to bits, and there being an afterlife. I pour myself the same drink as she left in the bottom of her glass so that I can taste the inside of her mouth. I stare through the smoke of my cigarette as my ears hone in on Mozart’s Requiem. At 00:41 I have fully restored the kitchen to how it was before I cooked the two of us dinner. The ignition of another cigarette reminds me of how she clung to me as I walked her to the house that holds her makeshift bed. My first exhalation focuses on how hard this must be for her… Here I am in my own real life version of an afterlife –as close as you’ll ever get. My drunken stoicism is replaced with empathy and concern. My physical weakness, which I hid, is now capable of deflecting any blow any one of those cunts outside would ever try and throw at me. Once you’ve died once, you soon unlearn fear. I can taste her now, even over the soprano who is racing ahead of the chorus.