Smoke lingers.

So I wasn't at the bar last night...

... because, for once, you see, I anticipated actually being on time for the 0800 lecture today, despite being told I could miss it. Instead, I was at home, where there was no smoke, and everything was clear, and bright, but it might have been otherwise, for the only way I knew was the mildly hazy pink of my eyelids, like a Virgin Mary, overstirred by a nervous straw and lit through with a candle. Something solemnly desperate played, unsuitably moody for the overly-cheerful environ so obviously decorated by a fourteen-year-old, and left alone since then, even as the person grew, and changed, and her clothes grew darker, more sombre, moving swiftly toward the funeral of her childhood, caught within a local temporal displacement.

Afterwards, too much time was spent on cheap novels and equally cheap snacks, the result of which was sleeping late, and allowing myself to miss the lecture. And when I finally forced myself awake, under threat of self-harm and deprivation, and turned on something equally moody for the commute, I found that the smoke from the bar never quite leaves you, once it has permeated your mind and sight. Everything was at once blurred and hyperclear, with a kind of external awareness, while closer up, I could focus on nothing.

The smoke lingers, and I remember things like sharp blue eyes, and gentle hands, blurring together from so many people, each cocktail the same as the one before, because somehow they manage to, even though they pour them all manually. Perhaps I'm just not sensitive enough. I have been told this many times. I have never been sensitive enough. But why, then, do I see the smoke when no one does? I can see the press of lips on mine, and a soft hand leading me to company, almost gallantly, if one could say it of a girl. And in a montage of half-remembered touches, lecture is over, and I move on, while the smoke lingers.