Drags

There’s a gag reflex on the first inhale of the first cigarette I’ve had in months.  A closed throat and pink lungs.  A punishment in peeling skin and hang nails.  Winter hands and fingers, cut up but never quite bleeding.  There’s a lonely leather glove balled up in the pocket of my coat.  Big brass buttons and one hanging by a thread at the hip.  A second drag and I am the brick of the building, melting into the mortar and gravely red.  Inside there is so much paper I could torch the place with the flick of my thumb.  Inside there is so much pain but I could set them all free of their demons with a well placed tongue.  Third drag.  Up on the roof the cars look like diamonds and I can see the spots on their drivers heads through the moon roof.  Shiny like a disco.  I haven’t danced in years.  Fourth drag and I’m gone.  There are butterfly wings with jagged edges falling like embers.  I just hope the lies I tell myself, about the ground needing the nicotine as much as I do, find a way of coming true.  I press the sunflower yellow filter down into the hard winter soil with my heel and hear it breathe out in relief.