first impressions

It’s cold here. That’s to be expected; this is New York…or was. New Pork, it’s called.
I’ve lived around this city all my life, but I don’t reconize any of it now.

My fellows are more violent than I had imagined. I suppose I, too, will have to adjust to life here. It seems that living in New Pork now is harder than living in New York then.

This city is pale and gray. Can the rain wash the color from the sky?

I wish I could repaint the sky, but I can’t even reach the clouds.

When I first came through the Razorwire fences to live here, I was alone. But recently I have been recruited; I am now a Cigarette, for better or worse.
For better or worse. Soon, I may know more about what that means.

It is time to go forth and explore. Wait for me, my friend, for I will return.

~ Ri Taylor

_______________________________________________________________________xxx

mood: curious

location: Castle Smoke

is est etiam vita.

There is nothing in my life I will miss. What does that tell you?

My name is Ri Taylor and I am 16. I am an only child with parents I hate– or hated. Now I live on the streets, but I suppose that doesn’t change the fact that I hate them. I seem to be the only human being in a thousand miles who knows the difference between being ‘eccentric’ and being crazy.

I fall into the former category, by the way.

It’s hard to get used to New York not being there for me. It always has been, and I guess I figured it always would.

But in the course of..oh, I don’t know….days, weeks? I lose track of the time. But either way, it’s not there anymore.

It was my shelter and the source of all my freedoms. I still dream of it, the grime and the glory of it. It’s funny how both things can be contained within the same city. Within the same word. New York is -was- a city of contradiction, I had always thought.

I’m going to take my past back.

I’m going mad. I’m sure I am. What person in their right mind would dream of entering New York now? Others have, but one must assume they’re insane.

Oh, god, I’ve passed eccentric, haven’t I?

But I have to see it. You know what I mean? You just have to. For the same reason people climb Everest: because it’s there.

In a few hours I will leave behind everything I know and have ever known to enter a strange and forbidding wreckage. And there is nothing in my life I will miss.

All lies ahead.

I can already taste the city, though I suppose the air is different now.

I could die. I know that. Just because I can still taste tells me that whether I’m crazy or not, I’m breathing.

One, two, see, my heart pumped blood. I’m alive. We’re all alive. No matter how low we are or how high -in any sense of the word, haha-, we breathe and eat and love and laugh and feel.

I think I’m freaking out right now; you ever notice how, when you’re about to die, you really start to think about how you move, the way your lungs work, the way your heart pumps blood?

Yes? No?

That might just be me. One, two, heartbeats, right?

Is est etiam vita. This is still life.

I just wanted to say that before I went.