Lucky

 

Today is the first day that a drop of rain hasn’t fallen all week.

 

It’s a Saturday, although the past week and a half have felt like one giant weekend, what with missing work and all.  The curse of kidney stones had fallen upon me and there was nothing I could do about it but take the pain medications I was prescribed and wait it out.

 

Bills unpaid.

 

Piling up.

 

It happens.

 

“Just let it go and don’t worry about it….things always work out,” I hear my mother’s voice echoing in my ears the same way it did through the telephone yesterday.

 

I called her again today.

 

Everyone’s gone or busy and although, it’s a rarity, I was bored.

 

“Whatcha doing?”  I asked her.

 

“Playing cards.”

 

I could hear the sound of her mouse clicking and I just imagined her sitting there playing online poker as a way of escaping.

 

It was quiet except for that on the other end of the line.

 

Perhaps my younger brother and sister had chosen that day to give her a break?  Or maybe they were just at friends’ houses.  Who knew?

 

“Wanna play something with me online?”  I asked with hope.

 

“I actually have to take my nap soon,” she said.  My mother needed her daily nap or she got sick.  That’s just the way it went.

 

“Yeah, I could use a nap, too,” I admitted.

 

I had spent the night talking and drinking with a co-worker till eventually passing out on his sofa at 5 am.

 

So I hung up, finished the book I had been reading, and just laid there.

 

Eventually, I yearned for a dose of nicotine, so that’s when I noticed that no rain had fallen.

 

It’s summer.  July’s approaching.  Yet the sky looks grey today.

 

I think we’re all a little grey today.

 

I stare at my hands as the smoke circles around me. 

 

“You need to file your nails,” I hear my roommate saying to me before I left to go out last night.

 

“I know,” was my response.  But I also knew I wouldn’t do it.

 

My pinky and index fingers on my left hand we’re short while the others were long and my index and thumb on my right were short while the others were long.

 

My pinkies kind of resembled what could be referred to as “crack nails” yet I didn’t care.

 

I didn’t care about much of anything today.

 

I was tired.

 

But napping seemed like something that would require struggle and I was seriously tired of struggling.

 

Before I knew it, I found myself going to light another Parliament and noticed my “lucky cigarette”.

 

My roommate started me in on that.

 

You just flipped one upside down and smoked it last.

 

I always flipped the fourth one, because there was just something about fours.  Something that whenever I saw them and especially in succession, I knew everything would be alright.

 

This time I just wondered if I really believed anything was really lucky.

 

It certainly didn’t seem so.

 

Someone once told me wishes were wasteful and much to my dismay I was starting to believe it.

 

And that thought was only confirmed by me lighting that “lucky” and smoking it even though it wasn’t the last one in my pack.

 

And that's also when I heard the thunder rumbling in the distance.