The sweat forces my shirt to cling to my back and it would cling to the space between my breasts too if they allowed it. I’m sure I’m red-faced, pining for a last sweet moment, but it’s gone. They say things are still good if someone remembers them. My smile comes between the snippets—the snapshots of a grainy camera, because life is shown to people like security cameras show crimes. You can never see exactly every wrinkle or mannerism, only a cornered, bird’s eye view of an act underway. We never remember the pre or the post, just the very act in itself, where we are ghosts to our own devious crime show memories.

My cigarette betrays my sweet disposition. Two-for-one. I’m poor enough to consider those medical experiments everyone gossips about, but never tries firsthand because we’re all too scared of partial lobotomies and deceitful face cream, except that we all do that anyway, here in America.

I huff it, taking it all in like I would with a lover. The white circle. The little blue camel situated between the bands. The long cylinder filled with sweet, sweet herbs. The stuff that saved America. I enjoy clandestine affairs with my cigarettes. The flick of a light sends my heart pounding, while the third intake is always the very best. You climax early with cigarettes. They never enjoy you as you do them, for what can they do except stand firm and saccharine and let you use them? And it leaves marks. Wrinkles, rot, tooth decay, all for this great huff that sends my head swimming in a private abyss. When I finish, my face is hot. Hold it fast, good passion! Linger with me a little more; let me smell you on my clothes and on the first two fingers of my right hand. Fill me again. Allow me access to you—I’ll never take it for granted.

I’m still thinking about it. I pull down my shirt over my navel, hand brushing past the bite marks and newly dried tongue trail. Like a stamp or even an even more archaic form of branding. The kind that’s easy to wash off, but every time you stare at your opaque (or even ripe) body in the mirror, you see it.

Long dreads. Thyme. The orange glow of the room that coddles the memories of harvest moons and the way She hangs over the earth like a true mother, orange, round, primal. The everlasting mother who smiles on you as you sleep.

Another long drag. I can’t purge it from my mind. And why would I want to? It’s not vomit—not something to purge at all, but some sensation of holding fast, of giving yourself to another human, touching, skin to skin. A man, they say, takes a woman for granted. He’s a fussy child, begging for the whole free woman, and when he does get her, he no longer wants her. Messy, selfish. But a man also must give away himself to any woman as he delves within her. There’s essentially a transfer of more than bodily fluids. And that’s the thing about women. A free woman does not have to give herself. She can moan all she wants, take all the pleasure she needs, climax when she chooses, using the man as a tool, but she’s never forced to give away any part of her being. She can walk away, still sweetly earthy and cruel all at once, never leaving a clue. There are no detectives for that sort of thing. Just memories.

I flick ash. It’s almost gone. I always hate that last half-inch of it. I put it out, and am on my way.