She sat on the steps outside the old factory building and took a deep drag of her cigarette. Her eyes closed as the familiar taste filled her mouth and then her lungs. She wasn’t addicted, but she loved smoking in the sun. Next to her, a journal lay open. A pen prevented the slight breeze from turning the pages. She looked at the blue smoke rising from the tip of the cigarette and felt the urge to make that moment something special, something poetic, a moment worthy of ink and paper. But as much as she liked smoking, she couldn’t find a way to make it glamorous, and the more she thought about it, the more she came to the conclusion that it was not worth mentioning at all. She took another drag and blew the smoke upwards, watching it fade into thin air. She had friends who vaped now. She had tried it too, but she hated the artificial taste it left in her mouth. There was no grit to it, and maybe no memories attached to a vape.
She ran a hand over her forehead, feeling the dry skin underneath her fingertips. The longer she sat there on the uncomfortable steps, the more irritated with herself she grew. She sighed deeply and rubbed the stub of the cigarette into the gravel next to her until only the filter was left. She put it in the pocket of her faux-leather jacket, where it joined another abandoned stub. She looked at her hands. They were hands just like everyone else’s. Ordinary. There was a mark of ink on her left index finger and another in her palm. She fished for a piece of gum in her tote bag, found one and pushed it into her mouth. She could stop smoking for months and even years, but chewing gum was a different story. That was her addiction. She took the journal and rested it on her knees. The pen replaced the cigarette between her right index and middle finger. She put the end between her lips and felt it with the tip of her tongue. Hard plastic.
She looked around her. Up the street she saw a lorry being unloaded and two burly men laughing together. Down the street she saw parked cars, grey and black and white. No colour. It would have made a desperate frame for a photograph. Nothing was inspiring enough to let her pen dance across the pages. Not even the yellow weeds pushing through patches of green in the gravel. She held the pen between her teeth and turned the pages of her journal, reading what she had written days or weeks before. She knew exactly which moment had inspired which words. Maybe it was the desolate surroundings. Maybe it was the silence in her head. Or maybe she had written all the words that had been destined for her.
Destiny. She wrote it in big letters, filling an entire page. Wisdom is knowing that destiny changes with every choice you make, she wrote underneath in almost illegible cursive.
She closed the journal, put it with the pen in her tote bag and got up. She walked down the steps and turned around to make sure she hadn’t forgotten anything. Her car was parked close by. She looked up the street, where the two big men were still unloading boxes from a lorry. She looked down the street at the monochrome cars parked in a row. The sky was blue. The air was crisp, but the sun felt good on her skin. The chewing gum tasted minty in her mouth. She pushed her hair back and caught the lingering scent of her last cigarette. A man appeared in her memory. She lowered her head and smiled. He was long gone. It was time for her to go now too.
The last cigarette
