how the air felt
17.07.2026 // 22:23
my first thought is the discomfort of awareness: it will have been roughly two years (25 months) since returning, that i will finally leave again. still, i thank god that it will not be more.
i showered and drank a couple glasses of wine and felt that pang of need for a cigarette, knowing however that it would completely ruin my cleanliness. outside with my small vice rolled up tight and smoking softly, i can tell that the moment is passing by with speed. i can’t linger in the night like this. linger without time. not now. not yet. i glance carelessly at the stars. i listen; what i initially think to be the chatter of a neighbor’s television is, i think, their real conversation. it sounds intense, too dramatic for this hour of the night that should just be for the easing into rest. i’m aware of my thoughts stirring quickly back and forth. i go inside to grab the first piece of paper and working pen that i can find and, in doing so, i lose those thoughts. better to keep them in my mind in their entirety, or lose them halfway in the process of attempting to save them, record them, preserve them? i tend to choose the latter, trusting my skills to expand on the fragments once i reach the editing room, although in that part of the process they inevitably merge into fiction. i don’t mind necessarily. but there is purity in the initial thoughts that is impossible to catch.
as i stubbornly finish my rolled cigarette i am wearing one of my most prized possessions from ireland, a sweatshirt, rewarded after bearing three months of the coastal irish summer cold, and the cursed undercurrents that bubbled through the world of the small town and it’s people. for a moment, i am brought back to that place. i miss it, still. how the air felt.
