Mikannie one-shots

Sunrise Sweatshirt

Warning: smoking

Based off the song 'Youth' by Daughter

I'm sitting on the fire escape of my apartment, I'm looking at the six a.m. sunrise, I'm holding a smoke between my fingers.

Hot baths, where the color and shimmer swirl in the thin water, parting way to your hand like you're some kind of God, rearanging the skies with the lightest touch of your fingers.

Fresh daisies that smell like new snow and look mockingly cheery.

Candy that taunts you with the sweetness that's supposed to be good, but is just overwhelmingly bitter, and coats your teeth in stickiness.

The smoke is sickening. The way it's scent lingers on you, on your hands, on your lips, and no matter how hard you scrub all that you strip off is charred, dry skin. The blackness never dissapears. The burn, in your nose, in the base of your throat, in the eyes that spew tears in a desperate attempt to get it out. Oh god, please, please just get it out.

I hate smoking. I hate the smell, I hate the feel of my lips wrapped around the paper, I hate the way ash burns your throat. I hate the way the smoke gathers at the bottom of your esophogus, as your body tries desperately to just stay clean. Stay clean. Stay pure. Stay fresh. Please

It's not the nicotine, it's the way you have to breathe weird, it's the pain I'm addicted to. To the way your tongue shrivels like grape in the sun when you hold the smoke in your mouth, to the way the ash sticks to the back of your throat, the way your stomach curls up and restricts even just at the thought like you've swallowed mercury. The way the sharp heat of ash claws at your insides, slowly tearing you open and seeping into your wounds.

I like the feel of putting a cigarette out on your skin, and seeing the burn mark, as punishment for poisoning your body like this. The way if you close your eyes, you can feel the black corrupting your lungs.

I'll be lucky to make it to the day I'm twenty.

It's weird, fourteen months ago we were snorting cocaine off the bathroom counter at the Stonewall Inn. And now I sit in my bathtub for hours and hours, just trying to rid myself of the grime, but end up just sitting in a pool of my own grubby muck.

It's funny, just nineteen months ago, I went cliff diving with you, landing in the cool, teal water that smelled of summertime nostalgia and sunlight, and now I burn holes in my lungs for fun.

Just twenty-two months ago, just touching your hand felt like getting electrocuted, a painful shock of energy fading into a warm haze, and now I have to put cigarettes out on my skin just to feel something.

I don't feel... anything. There's nothing there. It's empty, it's hollow, like someone has scraped my stomach out like the inside of an ice cream carton.

You still text me. On Holidays, on my birthday, anniversaries. And it must suck to see a long column of blue texts, all read, with no responses. And just having to wonder why I haven't responded, why I haven't blocked her, why I haven't just picked up the phone or typed 'Happy Holidays' just once.

I want to call her though. And it gets me thinking. Which will kill me first? You, or the camels?

Probably the smokes. So that's what I'll go with. Your pain is a slow, dull one. I need something sharper and faster.

I tuck my head into my sweatshirt. I roll the aglet between my fingers, cigarette hanging from my lips because my other hand is stuffed in my pocket in search of shelter from the six a.m. cold.

I don't sleep much. No surprise there. I don't sleep, but I'm never awake. I'm in a state of stillness, and coldness. Because I have no one to feel for, nothing to feel except hurt. I have no one to smile for, I have no one to love for, I have no friends, I have no family, and it's not because no one loves me it's because I just can't stand the feel of another person by my side and every time I try to be with someone I just can't bring myself to love them the right amount. I either feel nothing or I dive into love head first and my skin ends up tingling in pain.

And all I want is to feel, because I would rather be in agony than feel nothing at all. And I can't stand this clouded, smoky blur with the ringing and buzzing of an explosion in the distance, and the emptiness and the scraping and it's too much and I can't fucking stand it.

The sunrise is beautiful. A very light blue is smudged into yellow, and then a very gentle pink. It's kinda washed out, it's soft like oil pastels. It's cloudless, it's gentle, like an airbrush.

I like the sunrise I think. I like the way the gold light looks, cast onto green leaves, and light brown tree trunks, and the reddish-brown bricks. I like the softness, I like the light. I like sunrises, I think. They look nice, but they don't feel nice. They feel like a lie. Like a photo I'm staring at. Like it's all a green screen. I'm not supposed to be in this world.

I'm supposed to be in some other winter sunrise, where instead of heaving through shriveled lungs I'm swallowing the cool air, sun shining on my skin. Maybe the Annie in that universe is sad too. Just wanting to go home. I wonder if there's any universe where there's an Annie that's actually happy.

Unlikely.

I think I'm over you. But I'm still wearing your hoodie, I still buy your perfume, not even to wear, just to spray inside the hood, I still draw your face, apparentely I still choke out your name when I sleep, still think of your singing to lull me to sleep, still remember the smudge of your grapefruit chapstick over my lips.

I don't want you back, but I can still feel the emptiness you carved out for yourself inside me. And I can't feel enough to fill it. I hate this. I hate it so fucking much.