The tobacco end is lit under sickly, divine light.
Its artificial glow lays heavy on the snowy spectators.
I am the preacher of this sermon today, this cigarette my casualty, my charge:
The cigarette’s life began like most, its burning birth
Lightened the darkness which surrounds us.
And with the ragged breaths that are taken, the flare of its
Seemingly undying ember burns strong.
Impossible it must seem to the cigarette, that this flicker of bright life
May itself be extinguished, that this furnace of vitality
Shall ever be dampened.
But so it is, in flesh as it is with the weed
That through one’s exertions your smoky essence be filtered
Through the lung of life. Expelled, exhaled, disdainfully into the world.
I am the mother of this life, I gave it breath, I gave it fire.
And yet, it will be I who stamps its ember.
Its cemetery is grey and ashy.
Generations of the used stand squashed.
They themselves are their own headstones;
The cracked bodies the only sign of their resting place,
Like those unknown soldiers and their wooden crosses.
I lay it down to rest, in its sandy grave,
I say its last rites, I cross, amen.
It falls upon deaf ears, as it should.
And so I stand over it, life’s true eulogy
Echoing off empty walls.