Hand-Rolled, 2:30 am.

These hand-rolled cigarettes are good. Hand-rolled every step of the way. Hand-rolled into the ground as a tiny sprout, never touched with pesticide or herbicide or any of that nonsense, caressed and coaxed to grow taller than a man. Hand-harvested with hand-made tools, hand-rolled onto the bed of a beat-up pick-up. Hand-rolled into the barn rafters to dry. And tonight I hand-rolled the leaves to dust, and hand-rolled the dust into a cigarette. No added chemicals, no plastic or cyanide. Sure, you still have to pick out the odd grey-brown cat hair (Stinky can't be blamed for where she chooses to sleep) and silky mass of spider eggs, but that's all you need fear, unless inhalation of blood and perspiration and pride and the muscled toil of love give you any reason to hesitate before the inhalation of dried plant matter, nicotine and its wiry and persistent embrace, the obsession we justify and the chemical addiction we blame.

Tobacco's been important in my life, but I have no idea what this means. Memories of that thick black tar that you could nearly carve off of your palms at the end of the day. Those hot fucking miserable days. Why do I miss it all so bad? I was trying to decipher these visions and memories and feelings when I came home this last month, but I feel no closer to any answers. I'm looking at it all wrong, maybe. My perspective is skewed, maybe. Sometimes I feel like I'm losing my mind. I'm losing my mind, maybe. I don't want to go back to Tennessee, but for some reason I can't stay here. Why can't I? I need to talk to my mother. It's too late, and I'm tired. The snow never sleeps.

When I bought my acoustic guitar in Florida: it wasn't until well after it first caught my eye that I noticed the "color" label on the little display tag. Style? Dreadnought. Color? Tobacco. Hah!

To think there was a time when I didn't even know what 2:30 am looked like, or that it even existed. Now I live for it. I'd never sleep if- No, that's stupid. Nights are awful, long and lonely. I lose my grip, and only after I've buried my head in my pillow and pry my eyes open, letting in some semblance of day, hours later, do I feel the marks on any ruler to be properly spaced, balanced, balanced, demarcated. An illusion, maybe. Best not to consider these iniquities of personal behavior, impurities in mental health, inconsistencies of rational thought... not at this time of night anyway. I always feel so desperate in the late night, so weighted. And yet I watch the clock spin every time. 2:30 am. 3 am. With friends like these... We're all here together, blinking back the exhaustion, choking on confusing tears, and we are all so alone together.