Wrote something today.

I was bored today, so I decided to try my hand at writing again. This is what I came up with

Ashes by Adam Lanier

I pour more cream into my stale coffee -- stir it and make phantom images appear and dissolve into a pale liquid. I finally mumble the nagging thought that's been ricocheting throughout every part of me for the past few weeks: “I miss her.” Wilfred's cigarette falls, unlit, from his mouth. It lands beside his shoe, next to a smattering of butts and a fair sprinkling of ash. I sip my coffee which is already cold. Still too bitter.

“You're kidding, right?”

I swirl my coffee around the waxen cup. Tiny grounds float to the top, shifting like snowflakes. They seem just about as cold. I stare at them instead of answering my best friend.

“Course you're joking. After all that's happened...” he trails off, fishing another cigarette from his pack. I hear his lighter, and after a moment, smell the rich, burnt, smoke. I continue meditating on the cup of joe, willing myself to take another drink. I sigh.

“Fine, whatever,” he punctuates with a cloud of smoke. “But what's to miss? I mean, really?”

I look up at him, his hair tousled by the morning breeze. I have plenty of answers, but no words to go along with them. “I dunno.”

“Look, that whole period was messed up. But it's over now. Thank god.” He taps ash from his cigarette. It falls slowly through our mesh table and falls to the concrete below us. “It's time to move on.”

“But there's more to it than...”

“No. There's nothing else to it. Everything she touched she destroyed. It ended the best way it could have.” He lapses into silence, smoking and looking out far into the distance, and at nothing at all.

“She changed my life, Will, and I got rid of her.” I look down at the ashes by my feet.

Wilfred clears his throat, or maybe it's a scoff. “But if you hadn't...”

“Yeah, if I hadn't. Then my life would be more exciting. Different. Maybe I wouldn't always feel so lost.” This is the first time I've openly talked about her, and the words come haltingly and with difficulty. “I... I never knew what to expect from her. From the very beginning, I was clueless. And maybe she would have changed. Did I really ever give her a chance, Will? With everything I've learned... If I just had another chance, but with what I know now... Didn't she deserve another chance?” I look down at my hands, still clutching the half-empty cup. “Maybe I'm the bad guy.”

“You're not the bad guy. And I hope you realize that you're not the only one she hurt. You gave her plenty of chances. But she never took them; she tore down everything you built up.”

“Everything that's torn down can be rebuilt.”

“Yeah, doctor, I know." He pauses to take another drag off his cigarette. "That's why I think you and the city will be alright.”

We look across the street at the pile of rubble that used to be a series of sky scrapers. The ashes dance in the wind.