You gave me your hoodie to put on over my own sweater and jacket, but it does nothing against January’s icy grasp. A gentle breeze drifts through, rustling the trees and rattling my bones. The fog of my breath is indistinguishable from the smoke billowing from our lungs. A roll of paper and plant rests between your fingertips. A thin trail drifts from it into the endless night sky and weaves itself into constellations. You inhale, and a cloud pours out from your lips and nostrils. The light twinkles in your dark eyes matching the expanse of stars above us. I watch as the collection of smoke around your face sews a patchwork quilt of nebulas.
You pass it to me, and I give you the water bottle sitting on the cold concrete next to me. Hot ash bites at the back of my throat, but the relief comes soon. I am picked up and cradled in a comforting embrace, as a mother would with her newborn at the end of the day. The roll-up hangs there in my hand the same way a pencil does and I swirl it around slowly, watching it draw shapes against the dark background. We stay there a while as the passage of-no, the existence of time becomes a complete mystery in the bliss of the moment. The music murmurs softly from the speaker on the table, a song we’ve listened to together a lot, so I mumble along to the words but I can’t remember the chorus right now. I just wanna dance all the time—wait, no, it’s “all night,” can you rewind it so I can start over? My limbs hang loosely at my side like a marionette with no puppeteer, limp and useless and you, being a masterful performer, take hold of my strings and guide me through the dips and twirls and leaps of our private recital. Everything feels so heavy, I think I’m being turned into stone; could you put me out in the garden like those old Greek statues I like and make sure the moss doesn’t grow into my eyes?
The cold is still there, my fingers burn from it almost as bad as my throat, but it feels so easy to ignore in this moment because all I can think of is you, and being here with you. I can’t look away but I don’t even want to try, I just want to absorb it all, the faint glow of the still-lit end highlighting your features when you take it in, the curve of your button nose, the little dip in your top lip. The gentle swell of your chest as you breathe, your hair swaying in the breeze, the shivers that take over your entire body in waves as we sit on this bench, otherwise motionless. I take another drag, and the smoke encircles my head like a halo, dragging me to heaven with it—and here amidst the pearly gates, I look back and find an angel next to me.▲
