She keeps the lighter on the shelf above her bathroom sink, but her cigarettes are in a bookcase in next room over, tucked between a chipped marble vase with plastic flowers and an unread copy of Machiavelli. It is unclear why she keeps them separate. Perhaps she's ashamed of her aesthetic habit, although there is no reason to be. She always smokes inside, so no one can see to reprimand her. It may be that she fears the cigarettes will kill her, and rectifies the situation by keeping them separate from the lighter, as if they will have less power that way.

She bought an old lampshade at a flea market once and for thirty miles on the subway coming home, clutched it to her side. The lampshade was green, with tassels and swelling geometric tangles laced through its hem. She thought the pattern was Grecian, or something vaguely like it, so she made the purchase. She has no real reason for adorning her home with such things - no one but the landlord has visited in years.

She drinks coffee for the reason that it's said to be bad for one's health, although the cigarettes should have originally served this purpose. Standing at a bus stop, she wanted to identify with the particularly street smart looking people walk by, because her smoking gave her face a certain tightness that she believed came naturally to them. But, she somewhat miscalculated the risks of smoking and now can't even quit. Her excellent health bothers her because of the poetic dryness of it. She feels disappointed when she sees an uplift in her stride, instead of the somber rings that could be under her eyes. How can one feel woefully pasty and withered when one can run a mile in under ten minutes, eat chocolate without getting cavities and sleep a full eight hours a day? She has trouble with the mile nowadays, but coffee makes her able to forget the fact. The drink acts as a bandage, something to cover up her faux pas with the packs of Misty, so she can convince herself that she's adequately sickly, but not on her way to the grave.

She works as a secretary for a conglomerate downtown. Initially, she took the job to garner fodder for angry diary entries. By being forced to serve a callous and domineering businessman she hoped to wallow in the perpetual dullness of work in a meaningless dead-end job. She felt that in this way she might fulfill her need to feel tragic, because coffee alone could only go so far.

Unfortunately, the domineering boss lasted all of two weeks before he transferred to another city for, ironically, health reasons. There he received better treatment for his kidneys, and in the company he was replaced by a young sprig of a woman who not only failed to be callous, but even went so far as to raise everyone's pay. Not by much of course, but it still felt insulting.

She likes rainy days, but the best are windy ones or cold foggy ones, where going outside is very uncomfortable, but still possible. On those days she feels the most calm. Looking down at the street, she can't witness people running, walking, standing, talking to someone on their phone or by their side; living. Everyone in the city is home or at work and she doesn't feel the agitation of sunny days, when it seems like everyone but her has places to go and things to do. She doesn't see her life as somehow being inadequate. And, "After all," she thinks, "there is no rain outside. All of you could go for a walk or stand and talk on your cell phones, but you don't. You are inside. Why? Because today, you are just like me."

There was a storm once, in the middle of the night, and she forgot to close her windows. In the morning, she discovered the floor beneath her north window sopping wet, and the metallic green Grecian lamp with jade tassels and swelling geometric tangles lying on its side, having tipped over on the desk. She set it back and got some paper towels for the floor, all the while wishing that something else had fallen over, or maybe even broken. That something had broken spectacularly, not simply fallen with a dull thump. She conjured implosion and hissing copper wires and blue-pearl glass doors cracking and shattering and falling in heavy waves, but it all seemed too improbable, and most likely painful.

When she was younger, she'd thought that true pain, unavoidable and acidic, would satisfy her. She didn't take the necessary steps, of course; she'd been too scared to take things that far. But once, she accidentally fell down a staircase and broke her leg, and in the chlorine-scented and flavored and colored hospital room she discovered no way to convince herself that that the clumsy square cast sat elegantly over her injury or that the itching achy discomfort in her bone was in actuality distinguished.

And that is the root of it all. Her search is for safe ill health and inexpensive decadence and well-paying strife and pain-free pain, and in searching she finds not the poeticism and aesthetic fulfillment she seeks but the powdered milk substitute that provides sustenance but nothing beyond the bare skeleton of it. So she feeds her body caffeine and jade lampshades and works in a comfortable dead-end job and would find a way to regurgitate her dissatisfied soul, to swallow a new one, if only she could find the orifice it was made to escape from.

Sometimes at night, after a foggy or windy day, she sits barefoot on the porch, collecting the rain that slips, at first hesitantly and then boldly and loudly down her roof. The bland water gathers into her coffee mug and she breathes deeply, pulling at her nightgown when it begins to stick to her legs. She needs a memory, a conformation of existence from whoever understands her enough to send her this comfort, be it God or the devil, because she often has the hardest time telling between the two.