I hate you.

I inhale deeply, the smell assailing my senses, prickling the inside of my nose, feeling the sharp, putrid smell float down like cold ice down to my once pure lungs. I observe the swirling patterns the white smoke made against the dark canopy of the night sky. It was a starless sky, but then in a place like Mumbai, the street lights & high rise apartments shone brighter than any stars. For as long as I can remember, I think those swirling patterns have always fascinated me – smooth flowing smoke, making love to itself, disappearing into nothingness like the end of a beautiful poetry.

Another cigarette. Another seven minutes of my life, wasted, as those stats say. Wasted? Not quite - wasted would be the last seven months of this thing called life.  Knowing you, being with you. Disappointment. Now that my love, was a waste. This? This was just timeout.  Maybe even getting back to reality, real life for starters. As I saw the street lights shine like little fireflies in the side view mirror, looking at the glowing orange of the lighted tip, I once again thought of you.

You are this cigarette, you know? How it touches my lips but fails to leave a taste for long, lingering just while it’s still burning. It is the only taste I know while it’s glowing, yes, but its fake. There’s nothing to hold on to other than that faint smell of nicotine on the backside of my fingers. A faint smell that barely even registers. Maybe that’s why it doesn’t matter so much anymore. The embers have long gone cold. The smoke that fills my lungs suffocates slightly only so long as its there. After its gone, its freedom.

But it kills, you know. You contributed to what will kill me someday.  As much as I hate how it is - you had the last word. It doesn’t matter if you are nothing more than yet another exhaled dirty puff of breath through my nose, it doesn’t matter that you are long gone, crushed mercilessly into the asphalt by my perfect heel. It doesn’t matter that you touched the deep rose of my lips once, it doesn’t matter that you came close. I left you there on that sidewalk, and walked away as if I never knew you. And I will continue to do so even now.



But. You blackened the insides of me, and for that, bastard, I will never forgive you.

~ Annie.

P.S: Smoking Kills. Don’t do it.

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