The smoke fills my lungs and I am so close to escape. One freaking puff away from sleep, one puff away from peace and rest which has eluded me most of the day; so I inhale slowly filling my lungs with the specter of white smoke. A round of coughs escapes my mouth, but I struggle to hold that sweet cloud of mercy in.
I even make a game of it as I watch the clock. How long can I keep the smoke down? How good will the numbness feel as it creep from the tips of my toes to the pit of my pain? I cough again, and the smoke is expelled from my body with a tid bit of spittle: ******, only forty five seconds.
I repeat the process until my joint is gone; then grab a bite of the tastiest three day old grilled chicken I have ever known. While softly sipping a cup of water, I turn on my nature sounds slash instrumental CD, then crash into my bed. The springs creek in resistance as I shift and struggle to fold myself into my quilt like a tightly wrapped burrito, which sounds so tasty.
Lying on my bed, I feel myself breathing; the rise and fall of my chest coinciding with the rise and fall of the ocean tides. I move my head to the left to check the clock, and my body seams to echo, each movement becoming a shadow of the previous one. Closing my eyes, I let my imagination take me to sleep.
After a hard day’s work, this is the closest thing to relief I have. I lose my name. My sense of self evaporates. Then sleep overtakes me. Dreams of highways in space fill my head. There are no cars, only stars scattering across the infinite sky, with endless roads. Off ramps to nowhere litter the highway. Spiraling crystalline stairways being ****** into black holes are lighted from the raging inferno of stars. Glorious shades of purple, yellow, orange, red, and blue gasses dance in the distance.
The scene feels like an M.C. Escher painting. My body begins moves of its own volition. I am forced to walk this road; even so the sights are glorious. The neighbor’s dog barks startling me. Awakening from the dream, I rush to fill my journal with the wonders I had seen, only to find myself too tired to rise. My eyes are swollen shut. My calves are cramping in pain; my throat is dry and I am plagued by a cough that will not leave me alone.
After a minute of painful paralysis, I stumble to the bathroom, stub my toe on my fifteen pound weight and curse out loud, “what the **** is this weight doing in my ******* bathroom?” Warm ***** explodes from my ***** for more than mere minutes, and my eyes begin to open. I splash water across my face, dry myself, and walk groggily back to bed to collapse into slumber once more.
In dreams, I try to recapture that wonderful road, but it eludes me. Life pales in comparison to the rapture of my dreams. Maybe tomorrow, I will get to see where that highway goes.