If I told you I smoked cigarettes, you’d most likely think that I was someone who was addicted to them. That I might have dark hair, or be a bleached blonde, who is too stupid to read the warning labels on the packaging, or that indeed I might just want to be spiteful to some unseen thing, to have a tiny bit of control over my own life, through my death?

I’d like to think that none of those things are true, that I am not a bimbo who doesn’t deserve notice, nor am I some pointless rebel who only takes pleasure in something as long as it’s ‘bad.’ I take pleasure in smoking cigarettes when I am alone, and no one can see me, when I’m sitting on my side porch, sitting in a gray rubber cheap chair, just staring up at the fading sky. Remembering, yes, that’s it, remembering the people who I’ve lost and the ones who have come and gone, and thinking of those people I have yet to meet but I know will mean so much.

It is my prayer, and my meditation, this little action of inhaling deadly smoke into my lugs, killing of cilia one bit at a time…it’s a way of honoring the dead, thinking of the present, and dreaming of the future.

I don’t think that other people would really understand my discourse of course, why would they? I mean, this ‘addiction’ of mine, that only shows itself about once a week, to one every few months…it doesn’t seem to make any sense to them. No sane person would honor the dead by killing themselves, even just a little bit; no genius would sacrifice a bit of themselves to the present, or cut a little out of their future to think of it.

I suppose I am glad I am not sane, and that I am no genius, and that my little sin can remain just that. A sin, a stain on my heart to make it beautiful and as twisted as I want it to be, a glorious testament that beauty is indeed in the eye of the beholder, and that for every purple and black stain on me…I am made that much more unique, that much more remarkable.

Perhaps every person should have something small, some little thing like mine, a meditation that is utterly theirs to reflect on, some sin which no other could touch, or change. If all people had such a thing, maybe we would be able to take time to reflect on what truly matters in this world, and we would not forget those who have left us so easily, nor would we condemn our children to a fettered, impractical future.

Such is life, a lie, a pleasure, and the ultimate absurdity.

‘Oh sweet demon, take my soul, leave me gasping and marked, no purity and ignorance to glance my soul…let me be your child, your lover, and your redemption. ‘