— John Steinbeck, East of Eden (via vanished)

(via soul-of-the-spirit)

— Robert Brault (via i-think-i-see-a-light-shine)

(Source: creatingaquietmind, via of-essence)

His skin is tight and he’s watching her smoke, a habit she’s taken up to feel the warmth the wolf took with her. She breathes the smoke into his mouth as she kisses him and the cough curdles on their tongues. she leans over the iron railing of the balcony, rust flaking off onto her forearms.

“what if i pushed myself off and just kept on going, flying up into the sky?” she laughs. “i feel really weird tonight, like common sense took a vacation.”

“me too,” he says, the words slipping out between the cracks in his ribs. he lights a cigarette from her box thinking life has become so short smoking won’t make much of a difference.

and they take off into the city, cigarette butts two ancient red fireflies.

moisture rolls in from the sea and settles thickly above them, chopping off the tops of the buildings. they stand in a glistening street and he grabs her hand and whispers “run.” their footsteps are firecrackers on the pavement and the heat in their palms could spark and set the night alight, the energy bubbling up over the tops of houses, flooding the streets.

they buy donuts and red wine at a twenty-four hour market and sit at a bus stop, waving at the bag-eyed bus drivers with their thermoses of oily coffee, who don’t wave back. they get drunker and drunker and laugh louder and louder and she goes down on him at the stop. he comes as a bus passes in a blur of light and rattling wheezes and she can’t distinguish the two sets of sounds.

they run more and discover that they can’t stop. it’s an addiction they have yet to recover from and made up monsters in the shadows of alleys propel them forward in zigzags, spilling from the sidewalks. there’s no cars out at this hour and they have nothing to worry about. they follow one street until it ends in a cul-de-sac and they can’t breathe and all the feeling in their legs are gone except for the aching bands of their ankles. they’re too drunk enough to like being lost but not drunk enough to be unable to navigate their way home so they buy more wine and sit at another bus stop, chugging through green bottles and cigarettes. they get on the bus when it comes this time and sit in the very back row, leaning against each other heavily. their fingers rustle with pins and needles as they’re jerked over speed bumps and potholes, hands still clasped together tightly. they ride the bus to the end of the line and get on another going in the direction they believe is home. they might have sex on this bus because they get kicked off and find themselves in a neighbordhood with wide houses and green lawns.

they go to a park, the grass soaking their shoes and lie down among the chilled blades, clothes turning translucent like moth wings around a streetlight and look at the unfamiliar stars.

“do you still feel weird?” he asks her, the question extending past this night.

“i always feel weird with you,” she replies, turning her head away from the sky, to him. earth has never been so appealing. he’s never been this drunk before. never been drunk as a human either. it’s different, everything is brighter, even her eyes and their short, dim future he can already see a mundane end to. it chases him (he believes that is what he is running from tonight), but the thought of moments like this, nights like this where they find a way to challenge the universe and not care in such a dim, mundane way, they buoy him up, make him feel closer to the stars then he ever did when he lived among them, and their future seems infinite.

“i feel really weird too,” he says. “i’m so drunk i can feel two beats in my chest.”

she kisses his cheek and feels stubble budding, squeezing his thin fingers between her own. he staggers to his feet and runs crookedly across the green to a historical statue at the center of the park. she gets to her feet and approaches it slowly as he climbs onto the pedestal. wrapping one arm around the neck of the figure and swinging the other out towards the city he shouts, “i fucking love you!” and falls into the grass. the side streets ring with echoes. “swearing, that’s new,” she hears him say as she approaches.

the sky is lightening, navy fading to a deep lustruous blue. she helps him to his feet and they each light a cigarette, the smoke floating up into the predawn light.

they fall into bed as early morning sets in, sloppily undressing, crisp white sheets folding around them. there are two cigrattes left in the box, nestled closely together, wine-stained and filters fraying.

— Allen Ginsberg (via nirvikalpa)

(via living-moon)