[The Rules] [The Muse] [The Brother]

There was a fear that we weren’t alone.

That someone or something hid amongst the shadows. . .

Prowling to snatch us up at our most vulnerable.

**“Where do they go

The smoke rings I blow each night?

Oh, what do they do

Those circles of blue and white?

Why do they seem

To picture a dream above, then?

Why do they fade that phantom parade of love?**

The burn of the cheery at the end of her roll pulsed a glow of orange light that caught the hard line of her lips as she breathed deep the burn she’d quietly hoped would ignite in her bones and consume what was left.

As it turns out. . .

**“Give your troubles wings

Oh, little smoke rings I love

Please take me above

Take me with you. . .”**

As we grow older we learn that the true horror is in the idea that nobody was never really there to begin with.

That the dark didn’t shows us from who was there . . . But rather - It hid us from the knowledge that we are the only ones there.

We are all we have.

We are the creature in the dark.

She exhaled, wet violets lost in the smoke that drifted.

They too wished to escape the vacuum of darkness.

But the shadows were once the only home she’d known.

There was no leaving them behind.

Even if it did mean the aching knowledge that we are in fact utterly alone in the dark.