“Rock and Roll Suicide” by David Bowie has one of my favorite opening lyrics. “Time takes a cigarette, puts it in your mouth”. The idea of time offering a cigarette, or more than offering, putting it into your mouth, there’s something surreal in the image, beautiful and sad at the same time. Smoking, known to shorten life, gifted by time, perhaps shortening itself. To me, it feels overwhelmingly temporary. Time, life, moments. Maybe its because I’m dealing with the ending of something I thought wasn’t temporary, coming to terms with just how temporary it actually was, and feeling how fast the time went when we were together. A year an and a half went by in a flash. It’s hard to fathom just how fast. And there’s this feeling that comes with that realization, and with the memory of the day, it was over. Regret. I wish I’d known the last time was the last time. But, time handed me a proverbial cigarette and sent me on my way.

Music keeps inciting all the emotions that come and go inside of me. Songs that don’t even seem like they’d hurt start to hit, and I’m back in the pain again, spiraling and spinning around in it all again. I keep waiting for it to get easier. I light my own cigarette and put it in my own mouth, take a long drag, and feel the time tick by. But it’s not fast enough. I want to be at the point I’m over it, where I can get through a day without crying, where I can sleep and eat again, but it’s not here yet. I’m not here yet. Time is not fast enough now. But it sure flew by before.

At least the music makes me feel less alone.

“Rock and Roll Suicide” by David Bowie
from the Album, The Rise and Fall of Ziggy Stardust and the Spiders From Mars (1972)

“Oh no, love, you’re not alone.”