Long Nights

White lips, pale face. Breathing in the snow flakes. Burnt lungs, sour taste. Light’s gone, days end. Struggling to pay rent. Long nights, strange men.

               …

               Reality is, many people must do quite a number of ‘embarrassing’ things to stay alive. Ed Sheeran’s song, A Team; depicts the rough life of addicted teens and mothers who had to leave their homes due to lack of support. The first two phrases create an image of desolation and a job which has no assigned time frame, even amid a snow storm she stays out on the corner. Her burnt lungs and sour taste allude to something such as smoking in the cold or possibly the act of giving a blow job and deep throating to the point of exhaustion and quite possibly death. Continuing on with these arduous acts is the all-night job, she cannot go watch her darlings sleep or get any rest of her own because she must work through the night to earn enough money to live through the day.

               …

               The long nights I spend awake staring out the window are nothing of that resemblance. I can see through my window, that lady who stands under the street light. She hides her face in the shadows just as we hide our mental issues behind a smile. She makes her life better to the best of her ability while we dwell on the past and sink further into the black hole.

               We are forcing ourselves to believe we are like that person out there who made a wrong mistake or two that led to her unruly demise. But she will never be the same as us and our delusional mental illnesses.

               Only we can fix what we broke. Only we stand a chance at redeeming what we threw away.