never lose your magic

It’s quite telling that the place where my mind wanders for escape is an Old Victorian dimly lit by Christmas lights and Thom Yorke’s angelic pleading where I sit on (what could be) a ballroom floor trussed with elegantly sprawled sheets of Egyptian cotton, the spicy aroma of cigarette smoke and Issey Miyake’s signature scent hiding in every crevice. I imagine it to be the equivalent of a children’s ball pit, down in place of plastic; I’m sprawled across a cloud.  I inhale and a sense of calm unachievable by any other means takes over every sense in my body, exhale and a rush of knowing that I will soon singlehandedly conquer whatever lies before me forces its way to my head.

But a cigarette's greatest power: a  key that unlocks the safe of precious words that are otherwise trapped between my ears suffocating every ounce of productivity I could possibly muster. The free flow of words trickle from the depths of a soul I long exists to my head, through my veins, materializing through my fingers into complete phrases, paragraphs, pages.  As I grapple at the last seconds of the dissipating high, that mystical world retreats as if on cue, just as the Cave of Wonders knows its time is up.