Smoke

The cigarette burned.

Left on the edge of the ashtray - a wooden one - with carvings on the side - memories... 

An ashtray picked up on a vacation.. meant to preserve happy thoughts brought on by a sunbathing coma and too many drinks. 

But the cigarette burned. 

Smoke.. trailing little ringlets signaling the disease... curling around into the sky and disappearing... 

Forgotten. 

Like the joy of a simpler time - when the pain of heartache was ignored. 

Heartache was simpler then because it belonged it someone else. 

A shadow of the person who existed in that moment.

Heartache was drowned with the poisons of substance.. 

But now... 

fifteen years later... 

Heartache is not so easily drowned, 

Not so easily smothered with smoke. 

Instead she had become that smoke.. 

Barely there.

Mostly invisible.

Trailing away into nothingness. 

The more she hurt - the more she burned - the smaller she got. 

The less that existed of... 

her. 

Because this time the heartache actually pained.. 

It cost something

Deep within her soul. 

Pieces of her faded away into ash 

and she let it. 

Because to fade away felt better than the pain of heartache. 

To disappear felt better. 

to merely exist in the nothingness that surrounded her felt.. 

better. 

Smoke. She never thought much before how the word was synonymous with her. 

How difficult it was to hold her. To see her. truly see her. For everything she was. For what she was made of. 

Was that the problem? 

Was that why she always felt like nothing to the people around her? Because she was like smoke - disintegrating at the touch of curious fingers - winding around, existing in the space of the person but not really there.. 

Is that why she felt so disconnected?

Or did she become the smoke because no one put forth the effort to catch her - study her - find out what she was made of - where she came from. 

Was she exhaled... forgotten... left to be nothing more than a stale scent clinging to a leather winter jacket?

A constant reminder of the past -- bringing about temptation for another just like her.. 

A reminder for the one that smokes.. 

A discomfort for those that do not... 

And the cigarette burned.