The sweet, slow, silent passage of time. Or, Still Life With Candle

The candle beside my bed was hissing and sputtering. Something must have fallen into the wax and it was sending up little sparks. It was eleven forty-eight. I had just popped a piriton and was smoking. The nicotine and the antihistamine had found each other and blended in my blood, my narcotic intravenous lullaby. In a few minutes I would slip softly into the thirty-fourth year of my life. I blew out the candle so that I could fall asleep in silence. Happy birthday, loser.

(Photo from SridharanVenkat at Flickr)

It's going to rain.

This day was hard and cold and gray as knives. The sky hung low. The distant detached voices of life as it is lived in this place zipped from face to face with the urgency and impatience of bullets. Things were being gathered out of the world, collected into shelter before the sagging sky finally collapsed. I felt in my pocket for my phone to make sure it was still there. On a day like this, I wanted that sudden buzz through the denim to vibrate against my skin, a call that would bring her to me, she who was brighter than the darkest rain.