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 everything else

turns to ashes.

This is the prayer of the broken,

Not to feel something before the numbness hits.

 In the stillness i am both the burn and the ashes.

And still, I light another.....