Cigarettes

with every burn, every smoke 

is it a regret of the chest?

Is it a dead man's wish

 or a birth of a phoniex 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.....