Incense

Ready for winter to be over!

My incense seemed to hum as its cement tip crumbled off. The smoke began to liberate itself from the tangerine glow, off the sill, roiling over the plush paisley prints strewn across the bed. The chamber was insular; it lacked the heat a full, constant love provides in long hours, as a sun melts icicles slowly in winter or as a wind carefully erodes island cliffs.

As I inhaled, the swirling, belly dancer grays took me out the window, up the droll brick, and into the equally gray evening. It was all the same: the head of the burning stick, the tired puffs coiling away, and the timeless zone outside. Save the motion of this monotony, there was nothing to spark interest, nothing to stir friction between bones, nothing to unsettle the remnants of the battle zone so recently blown apart and swiftly, silently, vacated. They say in mists like these ghosts ease their way into the world of the living.

Like charred torches used to blaze down funeral pyres, I saw only the barren treetops through my thin glass pane. Softly contrasting an evening background, their spidery branches failed to reach higher than midway up the frame. Their growth was stunted, bloodily chopped and trimmed. They had neither sky for which to reach nor spring soil to warm their roots. Simply stumps, their uses were now left for distant staring, for longing toward, for rashly bulldozing over, or for avoiding.

Unsurprisingly, a contorted, chilled gnarl heaved up beneath my sternum, ever so gently between my lungs. Yes, ghosts ease their way in mists like these. And yet, what was living amongst the trees, the block-buildings, the view into the bedroom, and the smell of Opium? I cannot say that this morose spirit was unfamiliar. I cannot say that I was not consumed by it either.

I had turned down two friendly offers of company earlier. The ghost had visited far before these kind hands extended me their graces. You see, I had been lost long ago to an escapist, intangible world. The saturated colors of naked, nipped bodies online and on magazine covers incensed me to turn to… No. The reason for leaving the tactile land was a push by something darker than surface pictures. It had all to do with a Once Upon A Time.

The ghost grew from storybook characters tucked neatly out of sight. Hemmed in by a generation apathetic to creation myths, gods, and isolated, hallowed spaces, my imagination as a child lacked room to wander. It was either stuffed to the brim with rules or emptied into the heads of others.

Altruism was a bittersweet meal devoured by my impressionable, insatiable mind. And now its ghost cannot unchain itself from within my chest; its incense cannot escape my room.