#bad garbage

STRESS.JPG

He needed a cigarette, and he was having one, despite the better judgement of his physician.

Any suitably slow death is indistinguishable from a life.

Snow buries things, and buries things, and buries things, until there is nothing remaining save the soft, impermanent shapes.

He flicked ash into the wind, and suppressed a shiver. His feet were becoming numb now, but this was okay, preferable to the artificial comforts of his hospital bed. The biting cold was real, and he enjoyed it.

He took another drag on his cigarette, and sat down on the spartan, wood and metal bench that stood in the entryway. The world was coming apart at the seams around them. He had seen it himself, and yet, he couldn't shake the overbearing feeling that he, personally, was doomed.

The absurdity of it brought a laugh out of him, a chuckle. The warmth of it dissipated rapidly. It is the way of the universe, to return to empty cold. Energy, ephemeral. Heat is a presence, and presence is fleeting.

The man turned down to literally gaze at his naval, and laughed again. He was thinking too much. This is what he was without the doing. At least it was what he was now. All he had to do was bare up under the pressure until the next, pleasantly distracting crisis came along, and he could throw himself into that.