Snapshot of a City, a Girl

I could begin trying to paint a vivid portrait of the way she slept, or the way I smoked my cigarette or the way the cars sounded passing by on the wet street, but I would only bore myself to death and consequently bore you to death. I’ll instead take a quick snapshot and let you fill in the rest. She slept like a kid tired after a friend’s birthday party, I smoked my cigarette like I remembered all the gangsters in the gangster movies smoked them, and the cars sloshed down the street fading away like a momentary brilliant flash of light in the dark slowly dissipates from your sight.
         
You tell a girl you barely know that she sleeps like a kid who’s had too much fun at a party and she’ll think you’re accusing her of something bad. Her lipstick smeared on the arm of my coat she still had wrapped around her. I wish she could know how nice it is to find someone who still sleeps like a child. Her hair tangled and falling around her face despite a now loose tie to keep her hair back. I sit on the windowsill and watch her sleep smoking a cigarette the way the old movies taught me to. She’s snoring just a little and mumbling words that I would just about die to know. There’s a boy on the other side of town with depression so deep he only comes out at night who introduced us only four days ago. She is crumpled on top of the sheets on the bed in a haphazard fashion that makes me think she must have passed out while I was in the bathroom.
         
I haven’t felt this good in weeks and it’s because of her. I keep my cigarette pinched between two fingers at all times, sometimes alternating between my middle finger and my index finger and my index finger and my thumb, never letting it stray too far from my face as I peek over my hand at her asleep. Maybe all these years I just wasn’t looking hard enough for her because this time she came so easily to me. I keep my arm bent at the elbow with my hand always at my face pinching the cigarette and when I exhale I make sure all the smoke comes out of my mouth at once and not spread it out through my nose so that when it comes out it comes out in a thick plume of white smoke and not the sparse gray smoke that will trickle out of your nose and mouth slowly if you don’t pay attention to how you exhale. I don’t even need to hide the old scars, I don’t have to keep drinking all night when she’s around. I let my eyes harden a little every time I inhale knowing that the glow of the embers will light them. The City doesn’t seem so sickening anymore, that anorexic looking boy-poet on the subway isn’t so depressing. I let it burn all the way down to my fingers before smashing it out on the outside of my open window, watching the still burning embers drop in the darkness down to the sidewalk.
         
The snow came first and then the sleet and now the rain that won’t leave and it soaks the streets and darkens everyone’s eyes. More audible and sad, the tires grind into the asphalt the dampness that pervades everything. When the rain came everything started to stink, the old garbage and sewers began to stink and filled everything with that much more misery. The cars pass more slowly, they’re reluctant to let their mournful sound leave my ears. It seemed with the worsening weather the entire city grew grayer and older, along with everyone in it and I felt like I had to escape it all or die. The lights reflected off of the sheen of water on the street lend their talents to the depressing sounds as red tail lights glow on the black asphalt rivers running to and from the heart of the city. You wait for a great exodus from the city like all the rats and insects have already staged retreating from the water that has filled up their subterranean homes, but it never comes, people would rather be miserable than change things. The puddles and pools of water along the curb spray up under a passing car that doesn’t care if they might spray the only beautiful thing in the world with their filth.
         
But the city didn’t matter anymore, I would make a clean break and she would come with me because she was smarter than the rest.
         
Or maybe I would just sit on the windowsill night after night waiting to make that break and never do it, just like the rest of the city. Maybe everyone’s waiting for the exodus from the cities and still no one’s willing to leave.
         
But I’ll leave, I’ll show all of them how to do it and maybe they’ll follow. It doesn’t matter if they follow or not, she will. That’s the nice thing about finally finding someone who still sleeps like a child, you know they’ll trust you. But you also know that eventually you’ll betray that trust, it’s the shitty downside to the huge upside.
         
She’s still asleep when I light a second cigarette and another mournful car passes in the wet street but I promise myself not to ruin this girl. I promise myself not to let the world ruin this girl who still sleeps like a child.
         
I wish I could sleep like a child still, but instead the lonesome passing of cars keeps me company, it keeps a whole city company that can no longer sleep at night.