Tattoo removal is expensive.

Since fucking when am I sixteen, with black hair, a driver's license and cigarette smoke in my jacket.

I feel cheated. Time is the most deceptive of con artists, and therefore the deadliest. Whispers convincing comforts in your ear, "You've got all the time in the world," it coos. Programs your brain from the outside to believe that if you mess up this time, there's always another chance, you always have more time. Once you have this mindset locked in, it owns you completely, you just don't realize it. It takes advantage of your confidence in it, because "time doesn't lie". It crawls into your head and now it can truly start fucking with you. Things change faster than you think. You don't reckon time properly. 

I grabbed my keys off the hook that hangs by the mirror and tried to reach the door before I was spotted, but the mirror had seen me and was calling me back. I saw myself as I see myself everyday, squinting in the magnifying mirror scouting for imperfections, smothering them under mounds of makeup as if it makes them any less present. The plain jane face, the hideous bulbous nose that European ancestry was so kind to bless me with, eyelids straining under the weight of painted lashes. But this time, with one hand on the doorknob and the other fingering the hard, smooth outline of the lighter in my left pocket, I saw myself differently. I didn't see flaws or beauty or even hair, eyes, a nose, a mouth. I saw unhappiness. I peeled my face off, tossed it on the floor and revealed my ugly unhappiness, naked to the world. I thought to myself, I don't want to wake up in ten years and have to peel my face off every day. When did this tremendous unhappiness settle into my skin so deeply? I tell myself I want a tattoo but, hah, i've had one all along. It's everywhere, the world's largest tattoo. For not only does it ink every inch of my skin but it covers my muscles, my organs, my bones. 

Dear God, I hope a fucking change comes soon, I said. And so it happened. Time's dishonest, sneaky nature has served me well I now see, because I couldn't have made the change knowing it was happening. It was unconscious, natural. I'm thankful for this because forcible change never lasts long.

Outside, the click of fuel against flint, a hand shelters the flame, ignites. Smoke pervades my mouth, throat, lungs. Inhale deeper still and savour the toxins. I pick my poison of the day. Wind permeates my skin, chills my bones and clears my head. Snow bites at my heels and toes like wild dogs. 

And every day I miss you less. You should know that you will always be in my heart, but even that, my heart, most maimed organ and in being this, also the strongest, will be moving on to greater things soon. 

Lost friend, lover of times past, I love you and I will always love you, but I will not wait. I can't.

This is okay, I think. People are moving and I am still. My socks are soggy and starting to freeze. A strand of hair clings to my lip. 

I'm okay.