Fags

She knew her way around a cigarette and like the fumes from a fresh stub I wished in earnest to be ingested by cold, mid-afternoon air. I observed in awe her perfect, chimney pot lips spout circular rings a native American would envy. I’m sure she was trying to signal down someone, or something, to save her from my gravestone awkwardness. To carry her off to someone, some boy who could make roll ups with such nimble fingers it seemed like he were smoking a small, eloquent sculpture. I had no clue on most of the conversation on the way to mine, I had no idea that the French Revolution had used midgets to carry secret messages, but I listened anyway and rolled inadequate replies off lame, floundering tongue.

In honesty I had only bought my first carton of fags a fortnight back and although I enjoyed the aftermath of a smoke I wasn’t as fond of waking with breath so bad it felt as though it were macking on the back of my tongue, so I decided not to get addicted. But anyway I was wondering why she had started smoking, not that it bothered me, not too much anyway. It was more the fact that she was really was a looker and she smoked like my old, cepiar washed aunt whose jaundice-stained fingers were enough for a rush themselves.

I couldn’t understand why she liked them.

I kept toying that perhaps she had started smoking to keep her weight trim, as I read not long back in a health journal most young girls used this strategy, but her slim, waif frame silenced all thoughts about weight control like a good movie usher could hush a crowd of short-changed hyenas. So then what I though was that perhaps she had started because she just liked the taste, although I couldn’t get my head around that idea. How could someone as pretty liked flavours that echoed charred cardboard?

It just didn't make much sense.

And that’s all there was to it.