The night whistled past by as he lay dreamlessly on the five inch mattress he pretended to call his bed. The cigarette whistled a soft cry as he blew a gush of smoke up in the thin air- at least something was moving apart from his dangling legs. His heart had been silent for some time now, or so he thought. It had stopped aching that bad a little while ago though- the only key was being patient and watch what breaks down first– his body or his mind. For the first few days, he called on his dear old friends, whiskey and weed, and they entertained him to the full. He would drink himself senseless to sleep and wake up with a hangover. Some of the days, it was a splitting pain, his temples contracting and contorting to blow out the brains, others, it was not so bad. His days were a haze, went past him. But even though it being the midst of summers, he had never felt so cold.

Lying down, he knew he shouldn’t think of her but inadvertently every chain of thoughts ended up with her memories. He realized shutting her out will be an exercise in extreme futility but each recollection of the past made him yearn for what he had lost. His heart made him cough up tears and yelled for him to pick up the phone and call her, hear her voice for one last time. “Once, and that’s it”, it said.

He picked up the phone. Her number was the only one he remembered. He picked up another cigarette and lit it up, had to calm down the nerves before he could utter a single intelligible syllable. He had left smoking when he was with her, without, it acted as a placeholder for his addiction to love. The addiction to her puffed-up cheeks, her honey-almond voice, her kissable lips, her big brown eyes, her perfect breasts, her beautiful lovely ass. He pictured her naked, next to him, as he typed her number. The warning on the cigarette box caught his attention and he pictured her saying no to every advances he made. He forced himself to lay the phone down and think of all he had been through. Was it all worth this, “hell! yeah it was”, his heart said, and he knew it were true. But deep inside, the knowledge of his inability to handle another breakdown called searing through and knocked him to consciousness, to think straight. “This can wait when I am ready”, he thought.

Till then, some glasses of whiskey will do. Or a bottle of wine. Maybe a couple of prostitutes. Or might be, time.