The other day I was offered a cigarette and I simply shook my head.
I watched my friends light theirs between chapped lips, with a piece of menthol candy wrapped in plastic on their other hand.
With their wrists bent and their mouths open, I observed them inhale and exhale cancer, as I welcomed it into my nostrils.
I refused because I despised the idea of being the center of attention and I recall the vendor looking at me with her wrinkled forehead, wondering if I would agree to my "first" cigarette. And I didn't.
Yet in return I felt eyes looking at me, speaking to me, saying things like "That was uncool of"
I remember immensely focusing on the ashes that departed from the sticks and staring at them as they crashed into the muddy waters.
Every flick and drag was a subtraction of the overall years planned ahead for them. A part of me wished I could be in their shoes,
Because they were a step ahead of me, dragging them closer to their deathbeds.
Frankly, I thought of dying way more than any of them.
I am the one who is supposed to be nicotine infused, I should be the one composed of soon-to-be cancer cells and packs of cigarettes for future use.
Yet I stood there, slowly becoming a victim and a product of their secondhand smoke and abuse.

n.j.