1,999 days later + I still love you
An Ode to Cigarettes
I quit smoking cigarettes one thousand nine hundred ninety-nine days ago.
I still miss her some days. I catch my mouth salivating in the familiar – go outside, smoke real quick kind of way.
Humans said to me, “Congratulations! Wow! That’s fabulous you quit smoking.”
Those words confuse me because – is it fabulous?
Cigarettes were my friend.
Cigarettes were my lover.
In this one short Black life – I enjoyed something thoroughly.
I had a gay ole time —
One day you start smoking because a hot kid from Madrid smokes reds and you will do anything to get close to him.
Fall is falling and with that the temperatures. The smokers stand tight, blocking wind. Cupping hands to get a light.
Your arms touch.
You stand next to your crush and talk shit. Saying “gimme that,” before taking his pack and making eye contact as you put the filter in your mouth.
You inhale deep until the rum and coke mixes with the nicotine and the room starts to spin.
The next day, you buy a pack and keep it in your schoolbag. You frequent every doorway smoke session endeavoring to repeat the encounter.
Smoking is romantic.
Cigarette smokers know an intimacy non-smokers don’t get access to. Like a hazy portal where secrets and anecdotes are currency, “hey can I bum one?”
Maybe a smoking habit wasn’t a good idea.
But what’s wrong with bad ideas?
Naughty ideas
The only person I hurt was myself (and the landfill).
I could make an altar to self-harm and to keep it a buck — smoking was not the worst of it.
Someone I loved said, “you smell of cigarettes and cocoa butter.”
I relished it.
Cigarettes were my best friend. Back when most folks called me Bree – including myself.
They were my (albeit, expensive) ride or die. In key moments of breana-discovery cigarettes were present.
Cigarettes were an excuse to pause. To reflect. To connect.
A cigarette on a foggy morning with a cup of something hot. A cigarette after the worst shift of your life when every customer was an asshole, your feet hurt and your period arrived three days early with a fucking vengeance.
A cigarette when you’re waiting, anxious, socially uncomfortable and autistic.
Thank you to cigarettes for finally giving me something to do with my hands.
We were best friends – cigarettes and me.
I have better friends now — no doubt. But there are times I miss my naughty, consistent, slightly pain and panic inducing friend. We were friends in the queer co-dependent way where I couldn’t get enough, got entirely too attached and stayed too long.
I liked how she tasted and finding her lingering scent on my fingers, in my clothes.
I rejoiced at the abundance of a fresh pack and the ritual of the *smack smack* on my hand. Flipping two over: one for luck and one for fuck.
Have you ever been sad – opened a window and smoked a cigarette inside?
That is what dreams are made of.
Or sat pensive in a bath gone cold where the smoke mixed with the wet on the walls?
Cigarettes remind me of my Mother on her Mother’s porch: needing a reprieve from familiar chaos.
Cigarettes remind me of my Father in his tractor trailer in the Financial District in downtown San Francisco with two Peet’s coffee cups.
One hot with caffeine elixir, the other from the day before collecting old butts.
Do you know about the horror of being drunk and lighting the filter on fire? ESPECIALLY, if it was your last one.
What about the joy of a bump from a recessed filter?
Crying and smoking
Laughing and smoking
Cigarettes as a lover
Cigarettes as a companion
I didn’t have to be alone – because I had my habit to keep my company.
“I’m going to smoke a cigarette,” the most simple and perfect exit strategy.
—
Shoutout to cigarettes for teaching me the joy of a deep breath.
For getting me outside when I wouldn’t have found a stoop otherwise.
For making me friends, even if they only lasted five minutes.
Shoutout to cigarettes for holding my hand until I found other coping mechanisms. You were a real one and I will always remember you fondly.
Love,
b.