10/12 2021
In the sunset of previous nights I walked in a pillar of smoke, for how could I ever escape it? It wasn't impossible to see it through, oh no, of course. All the things that had ever been were there: there were the statues, the feeling of having the sun rise in the distance as I sat on the bus heading home, of getting home and realizing that home never truly was home at all. There were all the lyrics written on the wall, and me there with a brush, realizing that all they ever said were things about some stranger.
In the night I walked along the canal of a nearly continental town. Drunken shouts about drunken stupors in the distance. Neon lights flashing, glasses clinking. I had an empty cigarette pack, and a cigarette in my mouth. You had the last one, that I was lighting. I said 'How's things?' and you just laughed as if to say that we were past those things. You said that you had just gotten your degree, and I said that it either makes me feel really advanced or really stunted. So you asked me, of course, what I thought, and I simply stumbled. What could I say? Ten years, five years, what did it matter if everything was the same? Should I have lied and continued along with you along that canal, towards the dark water where I would simply have slowly been carried under the water by the weight of my drenched clothes? I said that I didn't know and you said nothing. I tried to make you laugh, and I tried to relate to you as I did then, but we were simply strangers then. There were all the lyrics written on the water, and me there breathing smoke, realizing that none of the words mattered.