Where There's Smoke

Smoking is a dirty habit that I haven't done in 15 years or more (maybe here and there, on a whim, outside a bar, when the night and the neon glow and the delirious buzz beneath my skin imparted the vague plastic sheen of a dream). But tonight the dark is too real, the day too near; and here I am, floating somewhere in between, in a desperation I recognize: familiar, if estranged. A longing to feel Something, even if only the dark burn of tar in my lungs, the slight twinge of perversion (oh, sweet self-destruction). To conjure illusions of danger, of power. Don't you know? I am a cautionary tale. I am a myth. A wild creature, breathing fire.