foreboding.

*an exhumed random draft

you smoke your cigarette, and dust off the ashes.

a small wrinkle forms on your forehead, and you try to reposition yourself as you sit in your worn out sofa chair. it used to be leather, but the cracks and dust have made it a shameful shadow of its once impeccable texture. you try to watch the TV, but you're not kidding anyone -- you know you are just randomly surfing channels, just looking for sounds that can keep you away from your thoughts.

you look around, and you see garbage strewn everywhere. pizza boxes, takeout softdrink cups, cockroaches that seem impervious to your presence. the room reeks of dead and dying things. you look at your reflection from the TV, and you see an old and wrinkly man. stomach bloated, face inelegantly wrinkled.  you are balding, your hair, or what's left of them, an unruly mixture of white and ashen streaks.

you look further, and you see that the kitchen counter tiles are covered with fungus. there are dishes that are unwashed, some of them covered in molds. the room, again, has the stench of death, and it seems like you are the only piece of living thing in that desolate place.

you puff your cigarette again, and as you watch it disappear into thin air, you see the last remnant of happiness hanging by your cracked living room wall. it's a picture of your childhood. with your brothers and one sister, and your parents looking like the respectable people that they've always been during their lifetime. you stare more intently at the picture, and you recognize that smile. the smile is familiar and for a moment, it becomes your only source of comfort.

but just as easily, your happiness transmutes into an inexplicable conflation of dread, bitterness, sadness. you suddenly think of your once beautiful house that was adorned with orchids, lady antebellums and lilies in the fishpond. you think of the five rooms that used to be familiar. the cross-stitched 'home sweet home' frame that hangs by your entrance door. you think of the numerous pictures that decorated your living room walls, and how their beauty almost had the scent of summer -- serious, wacky, gray, sepia and colored. you remember the endless april nights spent barbequing under the mango tree. the love birds, karla, the doberman, kobe, the german shepherd, choi, the daschund.

you close your eyes to remember, even for just a moment. when you open your eyes, they start to swell. you just let the tears drop. you let out a muffled cry of desperation, but in your mind, you can only ask yourself:

how has it come to this?