Monologue of a Man in His Sixties!
I am sixty. Or so they tell me. I haven’t counted in years. Time, like most things, became unnecessary once I realized nothing really changes except the body’s ability to endure it. I have been smoking for thirty-five years. No, that’s not true. I have been with it for thirty-five years. Smoking sounds like an action. This is not an action. This is a relationship. I remember the first cigarette. A girl had just left me. Or I left her, I no longer trust my memory on that. It rearranges things to protect me, I think. Either way, I coughed. I remember that clearly. I coughed like my body was rejecting something… and yet I continued. Strange, isn’t it? The things that hurt us first are often the only things that stay. I have been rude all my life. To everyone. Except this one thing. Which is absurd, if you think about it. To grant more patience to a slow poison than to living people. But then again, people leave. Or perhaps I leave them. The cigarette never does. It waits exactly where I l...
