You Don’t Have a Lucky Cigarette?

April 4, 2026

I don't know what it is that makes people want to confide in me but I've come across many eyes that grow a certain gaze, one that I struggle to determine if I indulge in or not. 

They give me the sort of look that you give a cigarette pack the first time you're allowed to bum one.

This is my new addiction and I will inhale until all there is left is a pile of ash that I step on while walking by to feed my newfound selfish hunger. 

I've felt this before and I understand the desperate need for comfort.

How do I fall into this gaze? That I'm unsure.

I find it’s in the exchange of offering my hand.

You see they don't notice that in stretching out my fingers I am reaching as if the hands in The Creation of Adam were my own, an attempt to extend my being into theirs. 

In the brief exchange, their fingers stretch confidently but for the lit cigarette in my hand, avoiding any contact but eye contact as they puff the cancerous smoke away letting it smack the faces of everyone walking by.

I often mistake that gaze for an internal touch, that's how I fell in love with my own addiction, the inhalation felt like a kiss that wrapped itself around and suffocated my lungs filling them with a profound silence that calmed my mind. 

I think that's how people fall in love with me. 

Lucky cigarettes are never my thing. I consider every cigarette unlucky unless it is found randomly at the bottom of my bag. 

But someone flipped one in my pack the other day. 

I'll consider this one lucky because it's the last time I'll fall into that gaze again.