Cigarette

there was a time when i'd have sold my soul for a cigarette. i'd have sold my soul for a drag off of anyone's cigarette. c'mon, just one little puff, c'mon please!

i used to specialize in quitting smoking. i'd quit smoking every year. sometimes twice. once i think i quit 3 times. each time nicotine would come sneaking around after a few days and whisper in my ear. »ssssara,« nicotine would say, »ssssssara, remember how you love me? remember how good we are together? sssssssara?« and i would remember, and remember how good, and bingo! there i'd be with a cancer stick between my lips again.

and then one day i quit, and i didn't start again. i didn't get grouchy and i didn't get fat from nervously eating chocolates. i just stopped and that was it.

I watched a blind man from the top deck of a bus lighting his cigarette. I was fascinated. He place the match along the cigarette so its head was at the tobacco end. Holding it firmly but not enought to crush the cigarette, he put the filter end to his mouth and drew the sandpaper side of the matchbox against the match head till it lit. The simplicity and the skill really impressed me.

Open a pack of cigarettes. Look at them. Snug as pharaohs, wrinkled and brown, entombed in a cardboard sarcophagus.

He offered him a cigarette, which he refused. »Look at them,« he said. »Snug as pharaohs, wrinkled and brown, wrapped in a cardboard sarcophagus.«

-- The Last Lost Diary of Uncle Barnaby