Both can ****
        The only difference is
                      Cigarettes shatter lungs
         She shatters everything

            I remembered the first moment
my lips pressed the filter
     as I lit it up breathed it all
                savored every smoke
       as if we covered up painful lies
        in a container of painkillers

The same way  
we used to pressed our lips
     sparked something between us
           savored every moment we had
    as if our love was a rose
               in a valley of tulips

Let me tell you a story.

When I was young, I was convinced one of two things would happen:
I would either die young or I would live ignorant.
And I was allowed to believe it.
I was careful, avoiding snakes, spiders, dirt, human beings, love.
I horded books, enough to give myself a doctorate in any field.
And I was called paranoid. Idiotic. A fool. Freak. Doomed.
But, I kept living anyway. Destroyed, most of the strings in me cut.
But living. And I was allowed to believe it was a gift.

Of course, this is a fiction, lie, metaphor, but the truth stands.
Children are not born to be afraid. They are taught.
Fear is conditioned. Rewarded. Considered a virtue.
The wildness of youth is tromped upon by cleat-clad "caution."
Gone are bright eyes, reckless smiles, heads thrown back. Life.
Dull glances, insurance, cul-de-sacs, and bitten tongues reign. Fear.
And fear is one of the deepest scars we can inflict upon another.

This story is not mine, though I have been the one to tell it.
But I am human. An ocean. A fault line. A candle facing a storm.
This tale, in some chisled fascet, mirrors my own.
And it will continue as long as I draw breath.

Start not—nor deem my spirit fled:
  In me behold the only skull,
From which, unlike a living head,
  Whatever flows is never dull.

I lived, I loved, I quaff’d, like thee:
  I died: let earth my bones resign;
Fill up—thou canst not injure me;
  The worm hath fouler lips than thine.

Better to hold the sparkling grape,
  Than nurse the earth-worm’s slimy brood;
And circle in the goblet’s shape
  The drink of Gods, than reptile’s food.
Where once my wit, perchance, hath shone,
  In aid of others’ let me shine;
And when, alas! our brains are gone,
  What nobler substitute than wine?

Quaff while thou canst: another race,
  When thou and thine, like me, are sped,
May rescue thee from earth’s embrace,
  And rhyme and revel with the dead.

Why not? since through life’s little day
  Our heads such sad effects produce;
Redeem’d from worms and wasting clay,
  This chance is theirs, to be of use.