Smoke

We’re sharing a cigarette tonight, sitting close on the steps overlooking the plaza.
We’ll, you’re smoking. I’m watching you drag and exhale. I’ll taste that tobacco on your lips when we kiss later tonight. I’ll smell it on your paint-stained fingers and in the clothes strewn around my bed. But now I’m hungry to breathe this smoke that’s been inside your body, smoke that’s crossed your lips on its way in and out of your lungs. I want to take it into my lungs now, and hold it there as long as I can, and imagine that if I breathe out just right, a part of you will remain inside me.

I guessed your brand that first night, do you remember? American Spirit Lights.
The yellow pack. It wasn’t much of a trick. I just put two-and-two together. Before the walk, we met up right over there. You were holding a lit cigarette and wore this sheepish little grin on your face, almost as if you were saying, “ it’s not too late to back out.”

The smoking didn’t bother me, and I said so, but you apologized over and over
that night, like you thought I might be lying. That always came up with us. You never trusted that I cared for you in light of everything you hated about yourself. Anyway, I figured you for a guilty smoker, and the guilty smokers I know buy Sprits because they’re all natural and that makes their habit a little less ugly somehow. I remember your smile after I made my guess. I knew I was right, and that I’d charmed you. I loved charming you.

I never saw you rush a cigarette like most smokers do. You loved the process, the
ritual of it all. That’s where the guilt came from, I think, savoring something so harmful. You’re enjoying this one tonight. I watch you face in profile, chin raised a bit, eyes closed, blowing smoke into the warm air.

I’d asked about your ex-husband, too curious for my own good. Who was this
man who had you, then gave you up? Your voice is flat as you speak, determined almost. In time I’ll learn this means you’re holding back your anger or your tears, but I don’t know that yet. Instead I worry I’ve upset you. You’re telling me how you loved him.

“I never wanted children,” you say. “I know I’d never survive the anxiety. But I
loved him in a way that made me want to disappear, and to really do that he needed to take over my body. I wanted him growing inside of me. I wanted to have his son so I’d know that feeling.”

When it all comes to an end, we’ll sit together again, alone in the dark, and I’ll
ask if you love me the way you loved him, and when you say no, I’ll beg you to try. Beg, because somewhere, in all those passed months, I’d begun to disappear.

I say, “I’ve never heard anyone speak that way. It was beautiful.”

You draw a breath again, hold for a moment, and exhale. I’m jealous of the
smoke and its power over you. I wonder: will you give yourself over to me the way you do the smoke? Will you draw me in and hold me there? I rise from the step, slowly, ready to lead you home. You stab the ember away on the concrete and take my outstretched hand. Still staring out into the dark, you say, “I never want to feel that way again.”