CigaretteSmokeAndSuicideNotes

Gather here for the story I'll tell
Of love and loss and one mans hell
The trials he faced, and through it all
He watched things beloved crumble and fall
One girl he loved for years and years
One girl for whom he shed so many tears
Over all the time, after all he changed
Everything he lost was everything she gained
Until one day, she walked out the door
For the last time, he could take no more
One final poem, the last thing he wrote
Through the cigarette smoke and the suicide note...

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I woke one day to find her gone. Once again gone. She would come back, she always did. Until then all I could do was wait. That’s what I’d done in the past. I suppose I should have taken the time to get some work done, but instead I flipped on the radio and lit a cigarette. After all I could always work when Brooke got home.

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Let me tell you a little bit about Brooke. Brooklyn Marie, the love of my life. We met about 6 months prior at one of those open mic nights at some café down on 6th St. She was reading a poem she wrote after her last boyfriend decided to paint the walls with his brains after his best friend shot too much heroine into his veins. The poor girl found him with a pistol in one hand and a short note in the other. Well anyway, back to the point: she was pretty tore up over it. She could barely finish the poem. Sobbing, hair falling in her face make up running in rivers from her eyes. The dim lights and the clouds of smoke hovering above tables, in that moment she was the most beautiful thing I’ve ever seen.

I came up to her after the café closed, trying to figure out what to say. I finally stumbled up and managed to stutter out, “Seth, m-m-my names S-S-Seth.” No hello, no how are you, just a quiet stuttered name. I’ll never forget what she said to me. “Seth, huh? The names Brooklyn Marie, most people just call me Brooke.” So simple and yet so perfect, it almost sounded rehearsed.

After I got past the nervousness and the urge to vomit subsided we got to talking and went for a walk. Turns out she lived just down the street from me at the time. I guess since I never went out of my apartment much I never got to know anyone in the neighborhood. We both had the same love for seclusion, and for poetry. As it would turn out we shared a love for many things, mostly her.

I think it’s probably fair to say the only person she loved more than me was herself. Her undying narcissism would eventually lead to the end of our relationship. And my life.

Despite her outward appearance, she was quite the lively girl, but after about the first three months, which were perfect, she started to change. She grew increasingly withdrawn, silent. Almost dead. Now with other girls I’d dated this wouldn’t have seemed strange. With Brooke it was quite a contrast to the light-hearted, talkative Brooke I knew and loved. We had moved into my apartment after about a month and things had been good. That was the first time since she moved in that I can remember her not bouncing into the room to come greet me drinking a cup of coffee and smoking.

I think it was then, after three of the best months of my life, after she started to change. That was the end of my life, and the beginning of my death. That was when things really started to fall apart for me.

Things were pretty bad, and she wasn’t showing any signs of letting up. She would come home late, leave very early, or sometimes she just wouldn’t come home at all. When she was home all she wanted to do was sleep or leave again. Things carried on like this for about the next three months, and I wasn’t getting any work done anymore, not to mention I was missing quite a bit of sleep over it too. I think that puts us to right about now.

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It’s already 10:00 and she still hasn’t come home. Probably time to hop in the shower and make and attempt at working. Rent needs to get paid, and I have to write to earn some money. God knows Brooke isn’t going to fork over anything for rent. And why should she? She doesn’t live here anymore.

Out of the shower and full of caffeine, I guess it’s time for work. Not more than ten minutes go by of me typing some sappy story about “fictional” characters involved in this “fictional” plot that sounds a lot like what I call life. I wish this was all a story. Something I could change as I see fit. Erase these past three months and re-write Brooklyn Marie back into my life.

Sitting her sobbing about my lack of writing and purpose in life, I start to realize that she’s not coming home this time. I look up to see the door unlocked, and something on the table by the entrance. There lies a note with “Seth” written on it in that perfect handwriting of hers. It’s a surprisingly short goodbye for the times we shared, although she never was one for using a lot of words to say anything. I must have read over those thirty-one words a hundred times:

Dear Seth,
I’m sorry to go like this but it’s easier this way. Please don’t come looking for me, I won’t be found. Goodbye Seth, I’ll miss this place.

~Brooklyn Marie

After putting down the letter and fumbling with the envelope for awhile I hear something hit the table. I look down to see the key to my apartment. She really wasn’t coming home.

As I’m pacing frantically from one side of our bedroom to the other I come to the realization that I really can’t carry on without her. I just can’t go on without my Brooke.

I sit down to write again. This time it’s not work, it’s the last thing I’ll ever write. I light up a cigarette and poor another glass of coffee with French vanilla crème, along with a shot glass full of water and some cyanide we had from taking care of our rat infestation. I sit down at my table to write the last four lines of my life:

I love you Brooke, your all I know.
You left me here with nothing to show.
Now you’re gone, I just want to hide.
A cup of coffee and a hint of cyanide.

I singed the paper folded it and tucked it neatly under the ashtray. I drank down some coffee, wiped away my tears and sat down on the couch to think about it for awhile. About thirty minutes had passed. The tears were still coming and Brooke was still not. Down went the last bit of coffee and my cyanide chaser. Nothing to do now but sit and wait, staring at the pictures of Brooke on my writing desk as the world went black and my cyanide latte with crème kicked in.