Something about the ease with which you hold the cigarette in your mouth leaves me insanely jealous. I watch as the filter kisses your lips and in a manner similar to one chiding a petulant child, to warn him against future transgressions, I want to bite that very spot. Nothing and no one has the right to be that close to you, not even an inanimate object you so heavily depend on.
It is an art — the lazy, careless way you hold the cigarette between two fingers. The way you allow it to rest at the corner of your lips while you flip the lighter. Once, twice — within seconds one end is ignited, parting you from me with the first drag you take.
Perhaps that is what leaves me torn each time — the distance you create between us when you indulge in this solitary habit. I fight myself for your right to what you crave, for you to attain it every time, for it to set you free, but the burden is quite large to bare — it hurts to compete. It hurts more than any mark you could leave on me if you were to entertain my masochistic tendencies.
For someone so well versed in the intricacies of human behaviour, I’m all torn up. It feels naive to set store by wishful thinking that you’ll give up smoking eventually.
The smoke you exhale is a testament to the moments I lose you to your vice. In that moment as the smoke blurs your vision, an almost feral, prurient need consumes me. It is the need to own you, to claim you, to win you, to bring you back to me. My heart stumbles before my head in wanting to save you, to love you senseless and give enough of myself to fill the void you try to fill and the hunger you try to satiate — anything to drag you out of the abyss you fell into.
It is a paralyzing thought to not be enough for the man I give everything to, to lose him to his habit, to surrender him to that which will kill him slowly but surely. And it isn’t easy to die, baby, but you sure make it look appealing. For I would welcome death too if you would just hold me against those lips.
