“Let them look, they don’t know you”, he says as he lights my cigarette for me. I inhale and then exhale and it makes me feel like I’m performing a task that’s life altering in its nature. I see him staring at me, so once again I put the slender tube of paper to my lips and inhale through my mouth and exhale; all the while feeling proud to not have dissolved into a coughing fit.
“Don’t just breathe it out, keep it in”, he says as I pass the cigarette to him. I don’t want to keep it in. There’s so much that I keep in, all the time. All I have to say, all I want to be, all I need to know- it’s all in here, inside. There’s just nothing I do about it, that’s all.
Should I tell him that I often wonder what it must be like to sleep next to him? Should I tell him that he is sweet and kind and it makes me uncomfortable when he talks to other girls? Should I tell him that I like him in his dark grey sweatshirt? Is he the amber or the ash? Is he the smoke or just the burnt smell? Maybe none.
Maybe he is just a chain smoker and that’s all there is to him.
Nevertheless, I can’t help but wonder if I should tell him all that I’m not telling him. Should I tell him that it makes me smile every time I think about how much he loves his little brother? Should I tell him that I don’t like him because he is too much like me and I don’t like me too much?
How do they do it? Everyone else I mean. How do they tell people that they’re jealous? How do they heal enough to trust again? How do they hug each other so easily? Maybe they don’t, just like me.
Maybe I’m just a cigarette, not unlike so many others.
Saunf_Mishri 