Pale Sighs. Revision. Petrification.

Each gust of wind pours over itself to steal a drag from the smoky torch in my hand.

Not today, little breeze. I will jealously hoard it to my lips and breathe my pale sighs.

I once thought it a bizarre ritual of self-cleansing. Filth coaxing brother-filth inexorably from the corners of my sunless and squishy insides-- but alas! My treachery would unveil itself as clever Diaphragm springs back and vomits forth my collected blackness into the lonely, hungry air (See: how quickly it did gobble up that cloud!).

But (as you should know) youth is revision, and nothing revises more readily than flights of boyish fancy.

I know what is really happening. I've seen the diagrams and photographs; I am (or rather, was) a man of Science! Bruises and blotches multiplying, a quiet meiosis of tar until lungs are choked black, cased solid. Two Gorgon-stared lumps. Petrifying eyes not content merely stopping there.

Maybe that is what I'm after (lord knows I'm hastening-- quick-breath quick-breath-- towards something): That my heart will, one day, finally become a stone.





Postscript: Aiko shared: "'Bad art is more tragically beautiful than good art, because it documents human failure.'" I should make that a scrolling banner on this page.