smoking nom merry marie juanna canadense 081009 ... tender_square windows slide on their tracks at all hours. the tenant doesn't descend the stairs as often to suck on cigarettes in his car. how can an addict go so long between lights? the air up there is stale yet absent of the scent of smouldering carcinogens. i adopt a burglar's tiptoe through the basement and hide outside in the graded entrance squinting at upper windows in the dark. there are no billows. 230427 ... Soma Sometimes I get a craving to smoke a cigarette, even though i never have. i think it’s a desire to engage in leisure. Or perhaps a desire to stop giving a fuck. Or maybe I just want to feel something. Hard to say. I’m remembering being like 12, and I’m hanging out with one of my dad’s coworkers near the baseball field in the military base. I think she was watching me as a favor, and we were at a ball game. Only I wasn’t interested in the ball game, I was interested in her. I still remember her bone blonde hair, in two messy braids that fell over her shoulders. The way I looked up at her, as the sun glinted out from behind her flat cap. The way her muscled arms looked so nice beneath her shirt. She lit up cigarette and told me to go back to the bleachers for a bit. I didn’t want to leave, but she told me that smoking wasn’t a thing for kids, and a mistake for even adults. I asked her why she smoked then, and she laughed a little sadly and replied “I never want to smoke when I’m smoking. But I can’t seem to do anything else.” and shoo’d me away. I think that’s always kept me from smoking more than anything else. I still think about her and the way her eyes looked, every time the thought of smoking crosses my head though. 230629 ... kerry sitting at a kitchen table covered in sunday's newspaper jack's dad told me never to start smoking, not knowing that i already had. jack's dad had eyebrows like caterpillars. his face was wide, a rougher, darker version of jack's. his eyes twinkled. his voice was like gravel but warm. he said "i stopped decades ago, and i still think about it all the time. it never goes away." jack's mom stood by the kitchen counter, occasionally tapping the ash of a virginia slim into a little silver ashtray. her tennis bracelet whisper jingled with her movements. she was tall, blonde, with dove gray eyeshadow. i didn't believe him at the time but now, nearly fifteen years later, i've found he was right. when the_guy_from_the_train and i were walking to east passyunk he told me he was weaning himself off nicotine, that it was working. i squeezed his hand. "that night that you came over and i kissed you and i could smell you'd been smoking," i said, "i have to admit, i was nervous. i was worried you'd start up again." he shook his head. "i won't." "i can't be around that. that's what scared me." we agreed that if either of us started smoking again then that was it. it would be over. 230706 what's it to you? who go blather from