September 12, 2011

Vignette

The first September of this year was overcast and thickly warm. I'd spent the morning smoking cigarettes in the bath and feeling alternately morose, then manic. With the window wide, I dangled one hand over the brownstone ledge and wondered if ash was landing on anyone's head six floors down. The water and air and the steam and the smoke were all the same temperature and I sat sweating discontentedly, bitterly eyeballing the tendrils of black hair that stuck to the sides of the shower. They couldn't be mine and I blamed my roommate for having hair, and for being careless enough about it to let it fall out.