Nine days

It's been nine days. Nine days. My mind will not wrap itself around such a simple concept. Its been nine days since I've had a cigarette and while I remember each and every moment crawling slowly by, I suddenly cannot fathom such a period of time passing without realizing it. But there it was, staring me in the face when I woke up, following me down stairs into the kitchen, holding the door for me when I went to work. Nine days.

The news has just come over the opera house TV, its been nine days of trying. Nine days of dying. I let Bowie out the back door near the base of the skull, just behind the left ear. I here the screen door slam...I drift off into late, summer autumnal memories living in the middle of nowhere, where the opposums hide under the sink at night and the cicadas sing so loudly you forget there's such a thing as silence. But silence comes, at three in the morning as the house settles into itself and all the doors to other rooms slowly leak the dreams of their occupants.

The silence is deafening except for a lone pick-up travelling through from nowhere to nowhere, head lights carving out of the darkness something short-lived and lonely, before disappearing behind a curtain in the night. As the engine fades, a single cricket begins to serenade the night with its song. I drift back from the memory into my room, into my body waiting patiently for my return. It's been nine days.