"Last night I did the right thing by not drinking and not smoking that last cigarette I wanted," I thought when my eyes opened. I rolled over and picked up my phone to check the time. 7:30AM. The music on Ryan's clock radio was gingerly waltzing it's way through his bedroom door, past Juneau, and over to the side of the couch where I was laying, alone. The sun was already up but wasn't high enough to spill into the room through the windows behind the couch. The windows, again, were half open and a cool breeze blew through them, intermittently, but somehow I was still quite warm. I threw off my blanket and lay listening to the faintest trickle of Duke Ellington, Kid Ory, Johnny Dodds, or somebody copping off all three or more of them.
Eventually I sat up. I'd gone to bed again without brushing my teeth; my mouth was dry, again, and had a warm, sick taste. "Why am I always feeling like I can't catch my breath," I thought as I straightened my back and breathed in deep. A small crackle in the lung led to another which was actually the crackle that triggered a pretty lengthy and productive cough. It'd been like this for days, every morning, a long snort and an excess of mucous needing to be placed somewhere; a napkin, a paper towel, the toilet. A cough and a loosened piece of lung glue and the question of, what do I do with you now that I've finally caught you!
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