The cigarette burns like a slow suicide between my fingers. I draw it in and feel the smoke scrape against my lungs as proof that something is still happening inside me, even if it's only destruction. The ember eats away at the paper the way time eats through flesh and memory. There's a kind of mercy in the burn; at least it ends with honesty. I watch the ash fall, and it teels like watching myself disappear - silently, inevitably, and without meaning. Maybe that's all we ever do: feed the fire, call it living, and pretend the smoke isn't our soul leaving.