Burn to the ashes
with every burn, every smoke is it a regret of the chest? Is it a dead man's wish or a birth of a phoenix from the ashes. With every puff, every smoke inhaled i am a different man. The lighter clicks — not just flame, but a ritual, a confession, a war. With every puff, every breath drawn in, I burn a piece of who I was. A different man exhales, older, darker, sometimes freer, sometimes more chained. It is not the smoke that stains my lungs, but the memories carried in it. Carried by the echoes, a laugh I lost, a name I shouldn't have forgotten, a promise I never meant to keep. I talk to the fire. I tell it my sins, and it listens like an old friend, quiet, crackling, hungry. They say smoke rises, but so do ghosts. And maybe I’m both: the man I was, and the man I’m becoming. Both rising, both fading. So don’t ask me why I light another. It’s not my addiction. It’s not my weakness. It’s ritual. It’s not death. It’s the price of becoming who I have to be when everyt...