Joshi

Go on light up. Drag that fiery red end that will warm your throat and insides first, ease your restless nerves and then, slowly start cooking your lungs till they become soft and crumbly like smoked salmon. Drag on that white stick long enough and your lungs will turn dark and tar-stained, sores that will become big, ugly holes will grow in your mouth and throat. You’ll walk to your grave years before god intends you to. Trust me. There was this girl who came to me a dozen or more times a day to light up her ultra milds. I guess she worked in one of these offices around here. It went on for years. I saw her grow from a happy, innocent girl to an older, perhaps bitterer little lady. She got boyfriends, lost boyfriends, got promoted, made more money, traveled around a bit, laughed, cried, lied, bitched, was bitched about, changed her hairstyle ten times, got a tattoo, gorged, got drunk insensate, flirted, was made passes at. But through all this she never stopped lighting up. Then one day she leant forward towards me with an unlit cancer-stick held between her thin fingers, ready to light up, but suddenly her mouth opened involuntarily and out gushed blood and pieces of her insides, lungs, intestines, the stuff you see only in medical labs. All splattered on the wall behind me in a live-exhibition of a Jackson Pollock painting. She crumbled slowly and silently to the ground. And fell dead among her own organs. The unlit cigarette bounced next to her pretty face, which was in death smiling mysteriously, as if she’d at last freed herself from an unimaginable bondage. Her phone lay broken beside her. In it were unerased, ecstatic messages from a rich, and madly loved new boyfriend swearing eternal love to her and promising her they’d be married by the end of the week. He never came for her funeral. I wonder why. Go on light up.


By the electric lighter at any shop.