Turn the lights on!

As I ignite the lighter my obsessions manifested, floating in a transcendental eventide, like silhouettes, they wandered alone to a tangle of shadows in the sunrise. Embraced by the humid walls of this grayish city, the essence that filled the gaps of the improvised alleys in a pile of homes was vanished from my body which, with shades of melancholy, blurred the street from the opaque grey of the wet stones until the last wood hue of that last shack, where you still could see the pale yellow of light in the last lighted lamp post.

Maybe by far, only for a few moments, I could get myself clear again, under that fascinating brightness that slipped to the cold wind, like a fluttering orange dress, glowing at night.

My desires quickly melted as words that broke down in an imperative mood stripping the brightness of my being to the abyssal sight of the dark.

The streets were silent just like hostages of the morbid landscape of São Paulo suburbia. It was all so quiet that my footsteps seemed to creak voracious into the emptiness that gave back in wild echoes that paranoia of being chased by the noise of my sole hitting the floor between the burned concrete and the plant of my feet, gradually.

I felt hatred of myself for making that little flame turn into the darkness of those few seconds that would last like a death penalty of a lurid life. I feared that dark pitch from the holes in my shoes to the limbo of my dilated pupils. Then, I did not know whether it was night or if it was the morning sky covered by soot. I felt lost inside myself. In the middle of all that smoke which made me blind, I was sure about one only thing: I had to follow that damn light.

My eyes incessantly scanned the scenery under my feet, at that empty space, between each step, sliding my hands up to the threshold of that cement field, looking for remnants of what was latent on me, hidden in my pockets.

Probably, I had more crack rocks in my pockets than I had of age.

When I was 7 years old, my innocence hummed dreams for my obsolete future. While I was drawing with a piece of broken pencil in a crumpled paper the family of my dreams, I imagined myself by 20 years old wearing a suit, walking fast on the rhythm of the steps that walked by the Paulista Avenue, aimlessly, just simply rushed and indifferent as everyone else. Soon, my dreams were interrupted by punches coming from my dad's big fists, wrapped in a mixture of cheap tobacco and alcohol, and the prayers of my mother, a woman who sold his independence for some silly illusory promise of a cherry Martini.

I was drown in the external circumstances of my reasons justified by the frustration of a melancholic childhood, frustrated and terrified, each hit of smoke brought up bitter memories.

At 3 years old, I was beaten by the babysitter. With my body full of bruises, I faced preschool submerged in that sentence "If you tell anyone, I'm going to kill you and your brother".  When I was 5, I started to notice the disagreements of my father's alcoholism issue, which my mother desperately tried to hide without success. At the age of 7, I was obliged to drink almost every night in the religion rituals with my father's relatives. At 8 years old, I spent the night awake, listening to my mother’s crying while my dad raped her all night in the other side of the wall without mercy. When I was 9, it was my turn to be raped. In that same year I tried to kill myself, but I had no success. At the age of 10, I tried to stab my father while he was sleeping. However, I had no success again. When I was 12 years old, I slowly started to quit school. And At the age of 13, I started taking illegal drugs.

My personality was broken by the frustrations I had in my childhood, blinded by crack, the only feelings, as clear as that old uninterrupted flame, was the hate and the pain.

When I was about to turn 18 years old, which lasted as if they were 18 centuries, I still suffered quiet, listening to the cries of despair and agony inside my head.

Once, when I was drunk, I broke some crack rocks with my teeth and another addicted by my side was rolling a joint with his dirty fingers and filling it with moldy weed.

Just wondering of having to stop smoking, I felt nausea. Along the vomiting attacks, my schizophrenic hallucinations were mixed with the reality that surrounded me, whispering that I'd probably die by a cop shot gun, right-wing extremist, frustrated for not mewing addicts in a cage 3 feet tall by 3 feet long and having fun feeding his sadism by watching me bleeding down in a jail full of tuberculosis diseased.

I couldn’t barely count the time from the moment I had a 4 crack rocks chewy to the next time. The air was dense, the atmosphere was tense and the smoke was silver. On and on, holding the breath between each hit of smoke, extinguishing time strictly, while I prepared one more 4 rocks chewy, waiting unaware I was alive, only led by the cravings to hit all the smoke of a chewy pipe, heading to the dealers spot to buy more drugs with stolen money. Those were my concerns, when I got myself high, with the obsession of a carnivore animal ripping his arduous game/hunting.
It all happened so fast. The dark became even darker. I was dead even before feeling nothing. I was feeling cold on a 79°F night. My face, a face without any expression was getting lost inside a mirror, without reflection. I felt the last beat of my heart, and later on I felt the cold of this burned concrete field. After quite a time, a pulse. Covered by a astonishing sobriety, I only visualized that fucking addict smoking all my crack while I nodded off one more time. Helpless, I recovered myself from a overdose just like a corpse fighting to live again. 
There I could guess that there was nothing, but the few remainings that was left for me to be anything. I stood up and went off dragging my feet on the asphalt into the darkest side of the street. 
The fear of walking on the light was not just for not having to face the reality, but it was also due to the fear of the contrast between the external clarity and my internal murkiness. 
11:50 PM. I recovered my mind with a liquour shot to be, one more time, the God of my miserable world and restless remake the lights that turn off everyday.