A Cigarette Knows

I love your smoke.  It's the way it drifts up in curves, like a snake or a slim-hipped woman, a signal rising to show where I am, to spot me in a crowd of people who've got nothing in their hands, no gray halos above their heads.

When I worked with the fire department they showed me once in a training session what it's like to be in a cloud of smoke. It rises to the ceiling, seemingly translucent but if you stick your head in it, you're as good as blind and breathless.

And still after that lesson I lit up a cigarette, sucked it in and spit it out of me, one blinding cloud of my love that poisons the world. I am as remorseless in my heart as an infatuated dragon.