Rejection

It tastes like rejection, she thinks, running her fingers nervously through her tousled hair. Reaching for another cigarette, fumbling with a blue Bic lighter, she inhales the first drag deeply into her lungs. Tension snakes it way through the muscles tightening across her shoulders. Rejection tastes like this cigarette. Familiar and unhealthy, but always there, always available like a dark friend ready, willing and able to assist in tasks both nefarious and eloquent. "We, none of us, are all light or all dark," she muses. "We think we know what we want. We even say it out loud. But then, when it comes near, too near, right here...what if it's not all that it's cracked up to be? What if I'm disappointed? What if...."

She shakes her head, vehement in rejection of the What If train of thought. Reject what you don't want. Reject what you don't need. Reject before being rejected. That's the key. All the while, all this time, she'd been using that key with finesse, poise, humanity, or so she told herself. It must be this way because it can't be that way. Projection is protection. Let nothing in that touches too deeply. Boundaries and barriers beneath ebullience. How clever. How naive. How effective. How lonely.