My skin smells of rotting popcorn kernels in the sun, and of butter going rancid. The pallor of dying yellow things hangs over the room and over my face; I almost wonder if you can see me through it.
We light another cigarette, one for each of us these days. You light me off the end of yours and I am breathing deeply as if this could take me somewhere else, looking around in my very best bar-stare at the people around us, similarly callused and affected. I see the casual flicking of their ashes; the cocking of their heavy heads; the cast of slender, ivory hands in blue light. Here is one more spiky-haired goddess with a nose-ring, dressed in a short skirt and bitch-boots, for you, darling. I cannot look at your face or I might seem to be interested in what you are saying, so I am picturing this dark red lipstick smudged across your forehead and shit in your hair instead, trying not to giggle for fear it might make me seem real.
Outside we are dreaming and cussing and groping, your drunken hand making gross circles over my skin and pressing me into a wall with your sad hips that can’t get it up for the booze. I thought for a second that you might be as bored as me.
I ash in your general direction.