Round.

Cylindrical.

Soft.

Is this small vice really what I'm going to let decide my future?

Is the nicotine worth the stolen breaths?

Is the tar worth the blackened lungs?

I’ve seen it before,

The agony.

The pain of trying desperately to breathe.

To fight for oxygen.

Life.

Almost like you’re drowning in a sea of air and no matter what you do, you’re always breathing in death.

It’s scary.

Frighting.

Awful.

Yet I pull out my lighter and soak it in.

The toxins I mean.

The deadly mixture of tobacco, tar, nicotine and god knows what else.

I breathe in the conscious fact that I am literally killing myself.

Shortening the days.

The hours.

Minutes.

Seco...

 

Then it happens.

That final day I take my last drag.

The last time I will taste that fiber glass.

Get high off that nicotine.

Fight for breath.

I’ll have closed my eyes for a final time.

But am I scared?

Do I truly care that I'm tightening the noose around my own neck?

Maybe I find comfort in the thought that a cigarette was digging my grave.

I hadn’t ever really been scared of death.

One point in my life I welcomed the dark thought.
I questioned how it could be done.

I had wanted it.

Yearned for it.

So maybe this stoge thing wasn't a bad idea

Maybe I enjoy the bittersweet inevitable death.

Maybe.