She sighed and let the smoke tumble clumsily from between her lip, parted slightly as she silently plead for relief. The harsh glow from the streetlight above partially lighting her tear stained face as she passed. The darkness was her only comfort on nights like this. When she felt like this. The cold dark silence she clung to so desperately wanting escape was usually the thing she feared the most, silence gave her the freedom to think, and thinking was not good.
Taking another drag, the amber light blurry in her vision she stopped by a bench and sat, wondering how she ended up here. She needed some air, she told herself, air and a cigarette. That wasn't the answer she wanted, but it was the easy answer, the answer that required no thought, and no pain or tears.
She'd cried enough, always in the dark.
She didn't want to think but she did, it's like when you're up high and they say don't look down but you do anyway. Why did this always happen, she got to close to the fire and she got burned, more than once. Because she never learns, she brushes it off and says it won't happen again but it does, maybe not the same way but it does. The perpetual victim.
Always hurt, always the blame. Maybe she deserved it, karma. Maybe the universe was mad at her for a past mistake, or maybe because she kept making the same mistakes. She laughed and took a long drag before tossing the dimp to the floor and letting the nicotine soak into her system before releasing the smoke into the dark. She watched it cascading and spiraling up into the dark,a simple beauty. Leaving her. Everything left her. She shook her head and looked at her feet, her boots scuffed and muddy. She couldn't keep anything perfect. She tried but nothing stayed the way it should. Things broke or got dirty and ruined, and it was always her fault and everyone knew it. She stopped herself, she needed to stop. Everything needed to stop and she couldn't take the silence.
The cars on the motor way sped past in a flurry or light and sound, calming her. The silence was her enemy again, pushing her to think, pulling her towards conclusions should didn't want to reach. She ran. Ran to the noise, away from herself.
Leaning against the railing she watched as they passed, people driving home from work or too work, she wasn't sure of the time. People going about their lives, not concerned with the troubles of a teenager. She closed her eyes as her thoughts started to scream, begging to be heard, but she wasn't in. She didn't want to know and she didn't want to be here.
Then, with a single tear sliding down her cheek she fell. Brakes screeched and lights flashed, people cried and wondered. And as the ambulance fought its way through the crowd, snow started to fall.
Winter tears and silence.