Smoke

Photo Credit:  Huffington Post

I was off drinking. Whatever that meant. 

No, let me not downplay it, I was no longer drinking...at all...and it hadn’t been a problem until that very afternoon. That very afternoon, when the day had gotten off on a really shitty foot. Then, the whole not drinking thing? Yeah...well...it freaking sucked. 

There I sat: feet dangling in the pool, dress hiked up to my thighs, holding my lit cigar, watching the sun go down. I wasn’t smoking it. Just inhaling it. The smell of a cigar calmed me, so there I sat.

I lit it, twirled it in my fingers, waved it around me, encompassing myself in a bubble of cigar smoke, and inhaled as hard as I could. The smoke waves billowed and danced upward towards the starless sky. 

The sky was turning into shades of beautiful reds and pinks and yellows, as the sun slowly sank behind the pines. 

I sat there taking it all in, inhaling the burning scent, trying to figure out answer to the world’s most asked questions, trying to figure what to write; inhaling, inhaling, inhaling. 

Yeah, I was going to regret this in the morning...when I sounded like a 60 year-old chain-smoker with emphysema...it was going to be cute....real cute. 

Nevertheless, there I was, and there I sat. It was the most serene I had been in, oh, the longest time.

---

Dated: October 13, 2014