One Cigarette

Walk. Night. City.

Nice gets you killed here.

Not in the lighted store fronts, and the smiles of cashiers or passersby. Not in the alleyways between these places either. It’s in the most obvious places.

I take a stroll under the grace of spark and halogen.  Each shadow seems to hide its own dried tears. The air seems to come to me in thick curtains that hang in black carbon dust.

I light a smoke and look around.

A douche bag walks around like a thug with his trophy. She’s sort of cute. The kind of girl who he can keep playing mind games with, instead of the chore of flowers and candy. He passes by and shoots me a dirty look. I look right back into his eyes and read into his false swagger and childish bravado. It’s far too easy to bust his grill, leaving him crying to his crew. He barks a little, his girl squeezes his arm tighter, and they walk away. Big man. He feels sated talking trash about me in the distance. I stifle a laugh. All he has is this predator need to be “the man” to an already broken woman. No doubt he’ll leave some additional baggage on this poor woman. She’s young. She’s naive. Her friends thought his intensity was sexy.

He doesn’t interest me any more. Neither does she.

I’m halfway through my smoke. It’s warm tonight.

A car rolls by, goes into a parking lot. A hot Asian chick on an old guy. One chirp, and the Benz is secured. Much like her financial future. He doesn’t care. He has his trophy wife and mistress. She has a 3 carat rock, possibly a side bang too. You can read it in the way they’re “too casual” with each other. Something fake about the way they walk together, as if their minds are elsewhere but still conscious of each other. The amount of distance between them, their body language. It’s not just their obvious age difference. He makes too much money to be that stupid, judging by the Rolex on his wrist, and the Benz of course. It’s also the fact I’ve yet to see them smile during the whole time I’ve seen them, even when they bother to glance at each other.

I have no clue how people can live like this.

I ash my cig, and walk on. There’s not much else that interests me here.

The city doesn’t necessarily kill you with exhaust or gun shots.

It kills you with its lies.