This is why you smoke.

You swing the cigarette from your lips to your side, bounce it a little. Ash falls to the ground as smoke drifts up into the haze of a dark-eyed city, a gray phoenix emerging from your mouth. The rare glare of headlights passes slowly, a policeman glancing over his shoulder as you take another drag. You hold the taste in your lungs, letting the tar settle down just a little bit heavier.

Expunge. Inhale. Exhale.

The orange glow from orange streetlamps illuminates orange apartments – none of this is yours. Shadows play across the street, chasing each other as the light flickers. Cloudy skies – orange as the city – threaten rain, but almost never follow through. It’s always been about the possibility. Potential release.

That’s why you smoke.

You dont want to be in this positionYou can feel the city pushing down on you, a different kind of smoke tearing at your chest. The lonely stars call you by name, scream for attention and long exposures, but consumptive exhaust drains the sky dry. You deserve the open spaces as much as a car deserves gasoline, constant attention, and fuzzy dice.

Your cigarette is going out.

Conversation drips down from somewhere above, sweet somethings mumbled into the night lover’s hair. You pinch the cigarette between your index finger and thumb, sucking control out of it while the speech falling from overhead becomes garbled and disjointed. You toss the butt aside and watch it fizzle in the gutter;
you’ve only got one left in the box, and no matches.