A Midnight Dip into my Inception, amidst a Midnight Mist.

A Solo for SanctifyThySin / formerly SanctifyThySins, written by Ashing.

Fictional character 'Thomas Shelby' from 'Peaky Blinders', portrayed alternatively and set in my Alternate Universe. Mature Content. Trigger-warnings included.

A Midnight Dip into my Inception, amidst a Midnight Mist.

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Sequence of a haunting memory with Serpent.

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Dirt beneath my fingernails reassembles each thought I’ve ever had into one, stringing along one final.

‘I could die this very instant, and the silk of black will devour me. My soul will finally mend with the cold ground. What is left of me?’

And when you have these intrusive thoughts, you no longer know which thought is your own and which reality.

Breathing in with the full capacity of my lungs was not going to work in my favor, there was no room for the extravagant rise and fall of my chest. “Extravagant”. Sweet little ironies. What is considered a basic necessity is but a luxury when you volunteer to serve your country. Breathing had become a fortune not many could afford since the war broke out, leaving their last breaths somewhere a minute behind you, a landmine you were fortunate not to step on, or a bullet that did not care where it would land.

I hardly remember what fresh air feels like, where decay and ruin are not omnipresent in the air.

The fate of so many people was stored in the faith they had in us who had volunteered, with our feet firmly set in the assigned ground to keep the light from going out in the eyes of the innocent, to fight a losing game the war was, what one would not do in the name of their country.

It was one thing being summoned with a letter, but to foolishly volunteer was a story of its own.

To say ‘we were chosen’ would be rather ridiculous, they knew none of our names and if they so bothered to learn them, they were forgotten within the next moment.

I’m breathing in the dust from the ground that could easily turn me into ash and have me become one with mother nature, but it ought to suffice for all of the times I’ve taken the fresh air for granted.

Being a tunneller was a sort of deal of practically agreeing odds of your faith might be sealed, as you dig the tunnels underneath the ground straight to the enemies lines, whether it was to gather intelligence by overhearing, or send everything flying from the biggest of bangs imaginable from within. In other cases, it was to overhear their own tunnelling, which gave us an advantage with the knowledge of where we were headed. Lastly, at times they served as a last resort to provide an escape route for the soldiers in the case of bombing.

I cannot help but face the music of the constant ringing in my head, the consequences of my choices. I thought I will have come back having made a difference, but in reality I came back to the state of things in England having worsened in my absence.

The sweat drips down my forehead as my blood boils from the rush of knowledge I cannot go back on, from the control I’ve been trying to establish with the hands that had felt the tremors of the aftermath of my good intentions, behind the tools I couldn’t afford to drop for a second.

Consequences of good intentions.

My good intentions.

My family and I nearly became one of the names that would have gone down as “collateral damage”, nearly engraved in stones only the rain would have remembered to touch once people have forgotten who it was that helped obtain the peace. As it always goes, heroes of war that are left with nothing but the medals for putting their lives of the lines, and the PTSD and the scars, the trauma, hardly ever mattered, as though a title and a shiny-thing with your names inscribed on it ought to suffice for the sanity broken by the trauma one can never heal from.

There’s no poetry accompanying the violin that cries to a losing game one signs up for. Even when you win the battles, the horrors haunt you in the dreams and, more often than not, in broad daylight.

Winning the war still entails losing a part of yourself that had believed in the better of the world, that had been innocent and believed volunteering makes a difference.

You think you serve your country, but you’re nothing but a pawn in a wicked nightmare you can never wake up from.

I dare admit to myself that it struck me gravely how this was my penance for all of the times I’ve taken the fresh air for granted, not knowing that I’ll come to dream of breathing in deeply out in the open, and how it would never again feel as freeing as it did before my cursed days of France.

What was normal no longer had the parameter, chaos ensued when I went back home and found myself among the lost nationality and broken pride, faith but abandoned as the Churches were filled either by hurting people full of rage, or those that had come to denounce their faith.

The pain threaded through your entire being prevents you from imagining what the new normal would look like.

It happened more often than one would think. I was alright outside, getting things done, pulling the family and our people out of the wreckage, yet still trapped inside of the confines of my mind.

Having considered the angle, the force needed and whether the ground above can weather the storm of what needs to be done, I take my chance with another mighty swing.

One Minute is a lifetime of the trauma of the trenches. Ever since I came back from France, well, I suppose I am still digging. I suppose I always will be, digging my way out from the memories of the days where I fought for somebody else’s cause and not that I had been told I was fighting for. Dostoyevsky was right, my worst sin was that I had betrayed myself for nothing.

That’s all there was to it, an instant of One Minute of everything at once. In a battle, that’s all you get. One Minute of everything at once. And anything before is nothing. Everything after, nothing.

Nothing in comparison to that One Minute of everything at once.

“Thomas. I’m right here.”

My voice of reason followed me down the tunnel that, at the time, we were still digging.

His voice was the soundtrack to my One Minute, the only religion that hadn’t walked out on me, even when God had left this place long ago.

Too deep in my troubled mind, but it did not stop me from feeling a chill run down my spine, with a shift of air when he joined me down in the tunnel. The worry that a single move could ruin the crimson running through our veins and the sweat that’s gone into this was a thought temporarily suspended in time, for the grace of feeling this closeness. I would always sense his presence long before my name fell from his lips, and I’d wonder how long I’ve been down here before he brought the lantern to illuminate the darkness, as mine was flickering and malfunctioning almost as a promise that it was about to go out. It’s odd to think somebody’s presence could stop the light from shattering what little hope faintly flickers in the heart.

As though it did not register, he goes for something more personal, which I had told him was reserved exclusively for family.

“Tommy.”

We were supposed to go by our 'code names', make it safer and easier on us, but I don’t think my mind would have registered my own.

I was his Relish, he was my Serpent. Later, I have become his Sanctify, and in doing so opened the door to a new hope.

I told my brothers, should something happen to me, they ought to tell Aunt Polly and our sister, and the rest of our gypsy family, that it’s been my life’s greatest privilege having stood up for a fleeting chance at fighting for them and what was right.

As for Serpent, well, Damon Salvatore, we continued to go beyond our code names, and no sooner went beyond all reason of understanding.

“Thomas.”

He called me by my name, and it hardly registers from the bombs sounding off in the distance, the fear that held me till the Sun rose only brought a delusion that this might just end well for us. My vacant gaze made it unable to hide how disoriented I’ve become be the high-pitched noises that echoed throughout this tunnel and made it so difficult to hear him, to the point that I thought I may as well have imagined it. Better late than never, I hear his voice snap me from the chains of paralysis that fear was, a voice I had yet to find out was strong enough to pull me through the labyrinth of my own mind, let alone the tunnels of France.

“You know better than to call me that.” I almost smiled. “It’s alright, Serpent. I’m fine.”

Damon, my comrade, has become the reason why I kept fighting even when I’ve been too tired to care at all, anymore. When I wished to finally close my eyes, the clarity of the skies in his own chased away the darkness behind my eyelids, bringing the Sun down to me in the tunnel. The last thing I needed, the last thing I wanted, was for him to worry.

I wanted to believe it. I needed to believe it that I am fine.

I needed to focus, too, if I was to spare either of us the death that began seeming a lot like a kindness.

We’ve learned to fight minute by minute, day by day, for a better tomorrow. But that tomorrow seemed too far out of reach, promising that no man will go back home the same. As I cast a glance at him in the confined space within the tunnel, where there had been no room for air, let alone the two of us, the crescendo of my awareness fills the hopelessness which had promised to become a void.

“You’re the first one who wouldn’t believe that, Thomas. ‘Too short, not convincing enough,’ is what you’d tell me. Save it.”

His voice was that cosmic dream that felt like silk against my ear, it pulled me from my nightmares.

He’d continue to remind me it’s alright, he’s right there, I was not alone in a waking nightmare.

But, I was no longer sure whether this was reality or a nightmare, they've appeared all the same to me as the noise intensified in the distance.

"Nothing is fine, Damon. Is that what you wanted to hear? I struggle to breathe. It appears as though all we've done here is dug our own graves.”

I’m abundantly aware that every move I make is a conscious decision, but the calculated manner in which I finally lay the tools to rest to replace them with his hand was a matter of absolute urgency. All I knew was that, in case this moment was all we have, I wanted to feel all galaxies ignite beneath the warmth of his hand.

It's not to simply say the world about and midst WW1 left no room for any sentiment among men, it was no news for the world before it, too. A single touch could be as wild as any treason, a ground for mockery and public humiliation. Love considered ‘out of the ordinary’ had been frowned upon, and nine out of ten times if found out about it ended in orchestrated untimely demise.

There were many reasons, a million of them, why I could not afford to do what I had, take his hand to hold as though it would not speak more than than treacherous words. He was silent for what had felt like One Minute of everything at once. I was left swallowing back softly as his skies reflected the sentiment of my oceans, his fingers filling the gaps between my own as though we’ve been forged from the same song of ice and fire.

He studied the certainty of our hold, mirroring my need to stay close as his eyes that I had found hope in reflected the same unwavering desire in my own. He meets me in understanding, where I feared judgement.

“Breathe with me, okay?”

There never was enough air in the tunnels, but I did not question how it was that I breathe with ease again. That moment was a heartbeat, one that had seemed to go on indefinitely. I lived in the ‘here’ and ‘now’ that was often taken for granted, I did not think about ‘later’ that has never been promised to us. The uncertainty of this endless war was much greater when life has given me so much to lose, but it had only made me want to fight all the more. No matter how crippled to the bone I’ve been in the confined space that felt as though it would put me to sleep at last, I smiled that special smile between two people who had shared the kind of bond that meant more than words.

The smile that I gave him, even when I felt like it might be the last.

“I’m breathing.”

When I held his hand, the key to freedom we longed for was in our reach, even though the tunnel gave no sign of the light on the other side. We came from different worlds, but when it came down to protecting what little we loved, we were reflections in the void that we swore we’d crawl our way out of.

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Present time: A conversation with Katherine.

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* * *

Snapping back from memories is no easier than fighting a literal war, as it so appears the tunnels of our minds are no safer.

“Joy always feels like a distant memory. Love, a phantom that visits you, but never stays.”

Katherine Pierce.

Her words dance to the tune of her genuine laugh, though barely audible, yet still the record that accompanied the fall of moonlight’s beams in perfect rhythm, ones that served as her halo for the night. My cigarette is balanced at the galaxy’s edge, how we called the other’s corner of the lips. Where once was a smile, now only smoke rises, perhaps to mystify the doubt or further allude that there was any. It inevitably serves as a great break from talking before you even knew what you felt like saying, or what you felt and thought altogether. The words that linger on the tip of my tongue are a shrine for everything I dread admitting.

“Not all love.”

The words left me as I chased the echo of a memory of Damon inside of my mind, listening carefully for the hymns of the Devil that have become the record I replay to remember my guardian Archangel that still keeps me safe from my nightmares even in his absence.

Miss Katherine falls silent, remaining a vision I never could part with before France, some nights the memories of her during the beginning of the war brought the stars to the starless nights. Not tonight, when a Shakespearean kind of cold has overtaken me while reminiscing upon the tragedy of never reuniting with my loved one, the first winter I felt no word of Damon’s will ever reach me again. The first winter that promised that I will never see a soft epilogue with him, rather the harsh circumstance of a tale that never got the fortune to end before something had happened to the writer.

No whiskey lullabies could keep them down any longer, the emotions that I had learned so well to bury deep down to where even I had begun losing access to them.

Katherine sparks one up on the windowsill, and I gaze at the speck of a flame that had matched the wildfire burning the wildflowers in the garden of her earthly eyes, gazing at me through the tendrils of heavy smoke that fails to keep me enchanted the way she had.

“When you’ve been cursed to a life where loss is the constant, Tommy, it’s hard to wake up and truly see the Sun in front of you, when all you know is how to mourn the light.”

People never gave her enough credit for her emotional range, yet it was all I saw.

We were both a reminder to the other of the life that we lost at a different point in time, the one with Damon.

The gramophone might have been broken, but we still dance in between the lines of the spoken.

“Some nights, the Sun beats the shovels. But most of the nights, the shovels beat the Sun. But nothing changes the fact that the shovels always come back with a mighty swing at the wall, each night anew.”

I confessed to Katherine.

Memories of who I used to be with him, I could see through the flames of the tip of our cigarettes long before they turned into ash.

“I tried looking for him, Katherine, but it is as though he does not want to be found, or perhaps something grander is at play.”

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Sequence of a haunting memory with Serpent.

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* * *

“The cavalry isn’t coming, comrade.”

He’s put this black and white, to rid me of delusions. Aunt Pol often said that honesty without compassion is simply brutality, and I couldn’t have agreed more. Nevertheless, it was what I needed to hear, not what I wanted.

“You’re a funny, funny man, Damon. What are you going on about now?”

I admit, he was funny, though I cannot afford to laugh, to get lost in the echo of a joy ever so fleeting and face the terror of upsetting the balance of the ground above our heads.

It still just might cave in on us. Running on the last atom of strength, I part my hand from his, so that I’d get to cradle his cheek. The insufferable silence of my denial had created this friction between us, as though it had become more obvious with each breath expelled. There had been more to this antagonizing desire to touch him, akin to a magnetic pull that was a simple force of attraction, and now that my fingertips linger on his skin again I feel the air growing thinner still. He was worse than an addiction plenty would find strange, he was the driving force, the reason I keep fighting. His flawless skin was the canvas upon which the brushstroke of my touch feels as though it is untainted by the cruelty of life, tender as opposed to all the horrors I had come to know.

“I’m serious, Thomas. We’re on our own.”

He speaks, but nothing about my behavior catches him off guard. The truth was no longer on the other end of the tunnel, the news of our potential and rather promising demise, it had been brought to me by a man that was capable of a great deal of things, but never of lying. The more I attempt not to stare at his lips, the more difficult it becomes to believe those words had fallen from them.

Every night, I wondered how will I live after this war, should I survive it, knowing that the closest I’ve come to tasting his lips has never been close enough.

There was no point in taking my anger out on the ground, we were running out of time and what we have done was beyond what we were supposed to do. It was becoming clear that we were fed pretty lies in the belief we’d never get untangled from them, safe and sound in the knowledge that we’d take what we knew with us to the ground as we ran practically a fool’s errand. We were their sacrificial lambs, and that was the truth.

My voice never gave away that a landmine had gone off within the battlefield of my heart, all of the chambers tumbled like they had been made of stone that could not hold, brought down to ruins by disillusionment in people of the regime that were only big on talk.

“And you know this, how, Damon?”

I already believe him. But I ask, regardless. He bites his bitter laugh back, yet it still rings through my head, loud and clear.

“It’s 3AM, Thomas. They’ve sent a messenger at the Devil’s hour. A bit too dramatic, if you ask me.”

The thought of Katherine, the girl before France, crossed my mind fleetingly, what would she have done if faced with this decision, but a great part of me knew she would save herself if there was proof the cause would no longer serve her nor anything or anyone she might remotely care for. Be that as it may, it was always Damon Salvatore I’d entirely snap out of my deliriously delusional obsessive thoughts from. I finally crawl after him, if only to follow him up the ladder and out of the tunnel, into the faint light of the starry night.

“Serpent?”

He’d offer a hand, and I gazed up at him.

The light of the million stars had paled to the brilliance of his smile, and that rough American accent that always made me laugh.

“Yeah, yeah. I know. One day, Thomas. Right? We’ll laugh at this.”

The lights of the galaxies were put to shame by the glow of his moonlit blue eyes, one that had instilled hope in me when it had turned out that odds have never been in our favor.

I push myself up from the bottomless pit of the tunnel where we had taken shifts in, and he’d pull me closer to the orbit of his smile, into his personal space where he hadn’t allowed anyone else close to.

It was just a smile, but it was the first sign that the summer will bloom again should we play this out right, that we will beat on with its warmth of change that will have us reborn from these ground, where but ashes of history will have remained but a place we have risen from.

Together in all of the ways, but the one we wished for, we stood there speaking through a gaze neither of us broke, while we listened to one another breathe.

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Present time: A conversation with Katherine.

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* * *

We gained a lot of intel and helped prevent a lot of British casualties. In that, we were together, too, even if we’d grow apart in everything else down the line. Life separated us, and I could only think of how he had dealt with the PTSD we’ve been left with.

No one wanted to remember the war, but no one was fortunate enough to forget.

There were nights when the clock mocked me by ticking away the seconds of the shovels slamming against that wall, over and over, again and again, right there. The wall that I went to sleep staring at. The wall that I woke to. The wall Katherine had leaned against to make me forget for a second, or stand as a barrier between my worst nightmares that followed me as obsessive fears thereafter in the waking. The wall I never trusted. The melody of shovels breaking against it became the only one I knew by heart, it was only Serpent’s laugh I drew from my memories that stopped it.

Serpent was there before the Sun, he stopped the insistent noise of the shovels. But, mostly, the shovels still beat the Sun, and they outrun inkling of the reason Serpent was to me.

The picture in a frame above her fades into the background as she made herself the front and center of my mind. My girl before France; Katherine, not Greta nor Zelda.

“You’ve given up, Thomas. You survived France. You have your whole life to make what you want of it.”

Her doll-like features remain safely tucked away behind my eyelids, and I struggle not to lose my focus on her to the wall she had leaned against, the one that had been a memoir of the nightmare that my past was, the one I cannot begin to escape each and every night. I hear them, the enemy-tunnellers, hitting against the walls in my mind, yet I do my best to focus on her voice.

“I haven’t heard from Damon since we’ve made our lucky escape In The Bleak Midwinter. When he wishes to disappear, not even God himself could find him, Katherine. My life means so much less without him in it, but here we are, anyway, right?”

Our eyes lock, and she held my attention captive so well that the noise of the shovels about to creep in before the first sunlight finally became a backdrop to our conversation at a volume just barely audible; But it was there, nonetheless.

She must have missed him in her own way, but she was not the one to let the past get in the way of her future. I, however, remain blissfully hung up on the remains of the days with him.

“If this had made it to you in time, perhaps January would have been a different story. Perhaps there would have been less suffering.”

It was a month of loss, each and every year since I was born. I’ve been born on a boat, Father had called it “The January”, as though he knew when he left it in my inheritance.

The sweetness of her voice had made the words fall in slow motion while his favorite bourbon lingers on the tip of my tongue, swirled in a crystal glass with no ice to rock the darkened waves. I’ve had anything and everything that had ever reminded me of him, whatever got me one step closer to the man who was the other half of me.

No matter where he had gone, I felt him by my side.

“This, what, Katherine?”

Katherine nearly dances in the moonlight, the light of her steps threatened to shatter the darkness that enshrouded me without him. She moves away from the wall, illuminated by the flicker of light from a candle, only to move away from its faint glow and cast a curious glance down at my Empire from the window of my home office in the Arrow House. I finally leave the throne behind, the chair pushed away from the dark cherry wood desk, where all of the negotiations could wait for tomorrow.

Any news of him makes it to the top of the list of my priorities, and it could never wait, not even One Minute.

Everyone who did not know her would have missed it as a detail unimportant to the story, when she fell silent, whereas I had been prone to catching the very things people slept on, the faintest change, a micro-expression that spoke where words failed to with her. Of course, I had followed in step.

“A letter, Tommy. I’m here to deliver something that almost failed to find its way to you.”

Silence.

Silence, midst the endless noise in my mind.

That familiar sensation of running out of breath was quick to return when her gaze attempts to settle the restlessness of the heartbeats she could hear running wild in me.

“You always were a fan of 'sweet ironies’, my darling Thomas. I take it you will love this one.”

She’d hand me the piece of paper that had felt brand new, though it was far from that. Neatest of whiskies that swirled darkened galaxies in them lit up, as her eyes usually do, downright melting with tenderness which I had seen the world lose during the war, a moment before my eyes landed on Serpent’s words.

I feel the urgency to down his favorite drink, as though the answers were down at the bottom of the glass.

Damon’s words.

They addressed the midnight dip into my inception of the January blues, ones that find me later than expected, but never too late.

“The clock finally strikes midnight here, so it’s officially the 4th ( of January ) for me. And what better way to make the wish of the hour than to take you right back to the start. Yes, we are the origins of it all. No wonder they don’t like us, most days. I was feeling some type of nostalgic as I wrote this and took a walk down our memory lane. Ended up laughing more than I would have ever expected. If we weren’t who we are, you’d think we were a couple of fools with the things that have us laughing like maniacs. To believe all of this goes back to a time of our life we’d rather forget. Sounds weird, but it’s definitely one of those, “you had to be there”, sort of things. Not that it would make much sense to many if they had been. And suddenly I ran across the speech to you from last year. 'Don’t do anything big. I hate my birthday.’ - You’re like a broken record. ( I’m laughing. ) Yet again, you know I won’t listen. As I looked down on the words of that birthday wish, I was happy to see not many things had changed. And if they have, it’s only been for the better. You are still the greatest person I have had the pleasure to know. You’ve been there through the good. You’ve been there through the bad. You’ve stood beside me in my moments of triumph, and sat beside me when the world around me had caved in, time and time again. You know after all this time, you are still one of the sole reasons I have chosen to keep going. You’ve been the greatest inspiration to me in ways that you cannot imagine. Not just in the fact that I’ve managed to rediscover my voice with your encouragement and ideas, but regarding particular views I’ve had about this place, the world in the aftermath of the war, and the people. Well, some people. Not all. Some things aren’t destined to change. And I’m hoping our bond is one of those that never do. You have shown me what true family is. What it means to have someone I can count on at any time of the day, because that’s the type of person you are. You’ve changed my life for the better and all I can hope is that for this next year life blesses you far better than it could ever bless me. I know no one more deserving of this. Happiest of birthdays, you old fossil.“

I watch my tears stain the paper that had been walked over, torn at the edges, and seemed as though it was a second from falling apart in the palm of my shaky hands, a second from leaving me with ashes of the words that have finally made it to me. It was something different delivered each year, horses, whiskeys, you name it, and he’d have already thought of that a year prior. But this was something no money could buy. I was a lover of words, though I know he prefers actions.

Katherine fell into my arms almost by instinct, as though she sensed that I needed the embrace, and I’d tuck my head away within the oasis of the crook of her neck upon the realisation that no word ever brought as much harm as the one that had remained unspoken.

“I love him.”

I confessed to her the words I did not say to him when it could have counted.

"I know."

She whispered in a manner so soothing, I could have sworn I imagined a linger of emotion in her gentle whisper.

After all this time, deep down, does he know?

Always, I remain if only to wonder.

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Sequence of a haunting memory with Serpent.

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* * *

“I told you. The only people we can rely on are ourselves.”

No, he was not the one to move on from injustice when all he saw was scarlet kind of red, even behind his eyes closed, in hopes to regain some composure. The shovel lays to the side while the messenger of the bad news gazes straight at me after informing us that, as a matter of fact, no one is coming to our rescue. The light of his blues uncovered a tumult of fear, once he redirected his gaze to Damon who had aimed right between them with a pistol. He rode all the way here to inform us that 'something’ had gone wrong and no cavalry was coming. Should the enemy show, we’d be left to their mercy, rather lack thereof. He’d reminded me of a reaper of death beneath the black cloak, weren’t it for the fear on his face when Serpent informed him he wouldn’t recommend any sudden movements.

My comrade, Serpent, believed in taking out the messenger, he’d always say that it sends a message. Actions over words with him.

I didn’t want him to have another guilt to live with, so I had pulled out the lethal device, infernal as it was, aimed as my breathing settled precisely well and long enough for an impeccable dot to mark the man midst his eyes and open a void that would bleed the essence of his treacherous existence.

I was far too worried about having upset the horse than having put an end to one of the many liars in the system who were only meant to be the perfect cover-up for the lie that would have been told when they found our bodies here.

Neither one of us felt hesitation to put ends where ends were due, as much as we had been determined to save lives.

All of the Hells we came from and how determined we’ve been in our agreement that we will not let it define us... At times, I wonder if we ever had a choice in how the war would impact us later on.

One hit was enough, but Serpent followed up with a parting gift to the heart, and another one at the hand so that the official paper of his ‘delivered order’ would be terminated in a rejection of our own.

The light went out in the messenger’s eyes, and his horse was about to gallop away in fear, weren’t it for Serpent who’s rushed to calm him. He'd put the infernal device away immediately, safety back on. He talked to the horse as though it had meant the world to him to be understood by such a black angel. Horses were noble creatures, they’d easily tell an honest soul from a liar, in a heartbeat.

Midnight Mist is what we called him.

I watch the two of them look one another in the eyes, in my rush to help take the body down, in order to free our new friend off of the burden of carrying a traitor of the highest rank upon his back.

“Why’d they sell us out?”

I knew, but I didn’t want to believe it. I’d draw the watch from our mystery guest’s pocket, watching the clock tick away the 3AM, and it had been about One Minute before Damon answered.

“Expendables, Tommy.” One Minute had cleared out everything at once. “There’s nothing more to it.”

This was one of the last days I’ve heard Serpent's low-key bitter laugh. I’d have bottled up that laugh to get drunk for the days to come…

If only I knew the parting between us that the future held, I would not have wasted that One Minute of everything at once on anything but us.