The clouds twist and spin in the air, gentle shapes that drift thinly through the room, growing faint over time. I breathe in and watch the room compress towards me, as if I were inhaling the world and drawing all of reality deep inside me. Colors explode deep in my eyes and fingers trickle with lightening sparks. The joint sparks briefly in my hand, ash falls crumbled and powdery to the floor where it joins another day's debris and waste. My fingers shake as I hold the cough in, the feeling passes quickly, as if my body has finally acceded to my wishes and I have become one with the pain.
Nothing can hurt me now, the world recedes. My hand drifts out the right and I pass it on.
I release my breath with a slow controlled coolness, allowing it to flow gently out of me, not wishing to disturb the serenity of the room. Quiet huffing sounds echo almost silently from the right, bouncing off spongy walls to ruffle my ears and nose with subtle vibrations, absorbed into me like water into a towel. The fragile flesh on my legs and arms quirks and quorks as it slowly forgets itself and allows the love to permeate it, frangible and tangible, it dithers and gathers and moves and grooves. The smile breaks upon my face like the dawn breaks upon the broken and scarred earth on a winter morning, warmth spreads across the landscape and touches everything; the arctic fox, the polar bear, the arctic tern, the fat and blubbery seal, sparkling the sun shines through the surface of the sea and pokes a narwhal in the eye with its own long horn. Each tooth glimmers across the room at me, sparking and glinting in the dim light which swells and swells until it absorbs the world and the whole galaxy becomes love and joy and a failed yellow gloom that fights the darkness with coiled tentacle and curved talon, rending and tearing as they fight each other for supremacy in the eternal battle. The mirror cracks and she moves against the background, a shadow that I will never know, her face contorted and distorted, staring at me with pity and revulsion.
"You're high."
I'm high. She sighs. She cries. The air parts with a ripping sound about her, impossibly quick she rockets towards the front door, footsteps chase her across the floor and out the door. A rumble like thunder sounds under the house as she fires the red mouse to life and drives home with the screech of black rubber and tires on concrete that crumbles and backs away from her speeding wheels faster than she can drive forward chasing her lights into the night's dark embrace and she's gone. I laugh at the image of her parting back and speak to the shadow of her disappearing heels that clip across the floor and out the door, my lips are numb worms on my face and do not obey me. The hand on the right has to fight to come back to me through the viscous light and dark. Dodge the battle brave fingers, skirt the melee proud palm, it's you and me tonight little buddies and the bitch has run now we can have fun with my downer burden not here to spoil the buzz and the mellow sweet flow of time that caresses my skin to raise gooseflesh on my arms that drop like lead weights tied to helium balloons that drift ever so slowly down to come to crashing rest on the cushions beside me. Colors spark and fly.
Across the room the shadows move and the clouds whirl and the red, red spark of the giver moves from hand to hand and mouth to mouth, from lip to lip the flaming tip is inhaled and savoured, devoured for hours. The time runs like a terrified squirrel with its tail caught mercilessly in a vice while its legs and feet scrabble for purchase on the slick tile and we watch for a while. The squirrel panics. Tiny heart beats and runs, the feet pound and lunge, the breath comes quick and sharp until the creature falls inert and broken as if finally giving up and choosing to die. I don't know why. The candle burns and the light drops lower to glower at me balefully like a predator must see the prey as it huddles, and I huddle down and hunker for cover under that forbidding gaze that locks onto me and keeps me in its merciless and judging eye casting forth the rays of light that ignite my hair and blaze across my skin, burning and scorching and leaving me raw. The worms on my face clamber apart from the love dance and the dry tongue climbs free to waver febrile in the air uncoiling like a fern frond to dabble in the breeze and touch and taste the clouds that drift like arctic snows across the room to obscure and occlude and obfuscate those about me. I gasp and scream as my eyes are foiled the light flickers and dims as the candle dies and consciousness flies from control to shatter like glass against the sky.
The ceiling falls away from us as we lie in paralysed wonder in the dark, on the floor, and the clouds twist and spin in the air forming gentle shapes that drift and mesmerise and flow into us on the wings of breath. The dark has won and we fall, fall, fall into the night with eyes wide open and unseeing.