90. Smoke signals

Like a cigarette hole where there used to be a face, that picture carried in one’s wallet, void has burnt, raged edges. A round scar through the layers of a Polaroid paper, plastic curling against the pressure of an intense incandescence. Souvenirs replaced by what can be seen through the punctured photograph when it is held in front of an inquisitive eye intending to face an eclipse. Ashes stuck to the perimeter, threads of cellophane intermingled with debris as vacuum suctions explosions of static scenes, all that’s captured without the need of permission.

I blow cigarette smoke through the holes. It comes out on the other side, the floating empty rings encircling the disappearance of the sun. Memory plumes, volutes of smoke joining cascades of clouds crazily diving into the horizon. How lost can I get before I ask for directions from migrating birds already far away. Their wings washing the day. Childhood monsters letting go of their cries and pain. The destroyer in me under hypnosis, keeping its balance on the youngest branch of a family tree. Never has love been so authentic. Oxidizing softness internalized like mad.

(There’s never any justice for the weak. Everyday the phone rings to repeat this. No eye contact, but hysterical balloons losing their air fast, whistling, flying out of control, crashing into the dilated tunnel of an iris.)

A drunk manual typewriter gone violent, hammering in red the prose of cryptic captions zigzagging under cultural illusions. The undecided descriptions of collective follies. Ashtrays crammed with cigarette butts, with yellowed filters crushed into mute accordions. Stained glass bringing fractured light to one’s anatomy and its long list of alibis. Shreds of tobacco sticking to the fingers holding the eraser going over one’s much needed solemnity. Perhaps not an eraser, but a hunter after the invisible circulation of ideas in search of a sound purpose.

The flame of the lighter at it again, brightening sunshine from behind the dark disc. Nicotine wrapping neurons with the very strings holding the stars high up in the sky. Tentacles of illumination networking their viewpoints. Interlocking their insights. Fine meshes for thoughts to bounce, a trampoline hosting mind-games. Untraceable veins of ruminations in the heart of the brain.

But then, I blow through holes only meant for the vapors of reverie, passages, for twists of contemplative cogitation, to allow reflections to reach the mirror site of airy suspensions.

See the mental trellis they weave. I rest on that foggy hammock. Safe, gently rocked by the white puffs escaping from my lips. Messages for distant people to read. Since today you’ve gone back home. While I return to loop-shaped writing habits.