She felt weak but very eager. With heavy steps. she made her way to the cart wanting and not wanting to kiss the poison she tried to abstain from ever since that vicious last time at the back of her cousin's house. She drew her purse from her bag that was all cluttered with paper and junk, and exchanged her few precious tokens for that which the world coveted --- oblivion, suicide, heaven.

Like a child treating herself to her favorite candy after a rather painful trip to the dentist, she held her escape between her fingers and reached excitedly for its complement. Dammit, she thought. The complement was one of those roll-types that she never really got to using even if she grew up searching for them in her father's pockets. She knew and she'd already accepted that she was just a novice in such and such affairs, bound to commit mistakes out of clumsiness and irregularity of habit [if ever habit could be irregular]. But she also knew it would be a blow to her ego if she couldn't accomplish the task satisfactorily. If only her vice guru were there, that wouldn't be too big a problem. He'd happily initiate for her.

She sucked on the pellet she'd been consuming, intending to postpone her attempt for even a splitsecond. The cart woman looked on. The old man near the stand cleared out his lungs and spit greenish phlegm. When time comes, that'll be the first legislation I'm going to pass -- no fucking spitting on the ground.

She sucked harder. Her mouth went dry. Harder, until her tongue felt numb. Harder, until she felt a tinge of pain. She stopped.

This is pointless. Suffer or suffer longer. With a silent stipulation of mind and body, she fixed her thumb against the metal and slid it down. Nothing. Then, with a second attempt, a heavier push, the sacred flame ignited.

She lit the slender and fragant beauty that was parting her chapped lips. The tip of her stick climaxed to a brief red and eventually turned to ash. For a first glorious moment, she took a drag and the incense was in her -- its bitter taste spread over the roof of her mouth, into her gums and, embraced her tongue, the magic of its chemical erased the worries and tension in her head, the pangs of guilt from having taken it coursed throughout her body. She thought she would choke on it with the air playing on the border of her throat. Then she released it, slowly, admiring it as long as its visibility permitted, taking in every detail before it gave itself to evanescence.

She continued to work it as she made her way towards the adjacent building. With every step, her questions plagued her, the intensity of rhetorics merely worsening the condition of her fried brain. She saw her life as the exact same thing she was hitting on. How could something so good also be a detriment? Why is it that there is a need to belong and, upon acceptance, the mounting urge to escape? Why do reasons always turn into excuses? Why this tolerance for pain, this willingness to take risks? How come no pleasure ever lasts? What and where is happiness? Don't I have a fucking say in things? It's my life after all.

She sat on the washed out steps of her college. She felt like a speck, an unimportant detail of a bizaare scene, a minute obscenity in the raw, unnoticeable to the public who constantly passed her by. She felt ill. She breathed; with every drag she consumed and was consumed. A few more, and her last.

Then it was over. She stood up and walked a few steps away from the guard. She threw the evidence of her existence, the nothingness of the butt, and crushed it with her foot to pacify the remaining cinders. As she was feeling for her purse in her bag, a guy who hardly knew her but had been quite a figure not so long ago in her life, came by and asked.

"Can I borrow your lighter?"

She smiled and looked at him with all the sincerity she could muster.

"Sorry, I don't smoke."

***written on a day when the heavens were gray and my eyes were red