It's Not About Cigarettes

Some days, I’m still fighting the urge to light a cigarette—missing those rippling ribbons of smoke and the way they would uncoil in the dark, humid air. I’ve been coughing so much lately, and my lungs will hardly expand for any air that isn’t polluted at the source. I’ve been hacking up my lungs, and each time it feels like trying to drag them out through my throat just to see how charred they’ve become. I ignore any signs of disease—any signs of my own actions catching up to me—all because I’m so afflicted and so addicted to slowly ending my own life. Undoing the veiny strings of my body for no reason other than my love for being unhappy, only allowing myself to breathe the poison I think I deserve. After long nights, when my daydream canopies crumble, I always wish to commit blasphemy for you again—treat your white ash like the god I sometimes think stopped loving me long ago. I wish I could still believe the burning in my chest when I run is the only thing that will save me from a future that’s not home—because it saves me from a world where I feel like all I am is my flesh and bones.