I never did like boxes. They told me that I was good at playing the guitar, so I started writing. They told me that I was good at writing, so I started taking photos. They told me that I was good at taking photos so I fell in love with a smoker. It was alright at first. We smoked under the moonlight while everyone else was dancing. In parking lots. Sitting on walls. But I got tired of spending the money because I wanted to have beautiful hair and that had a price too. That was okay for a bit too except that he still wanted to smoke all of the time. We would be together, discussing fallout shelters or movie stars, and he would disappear for five minutes. And in those five minutes I was sure that I needed him there. He was always leaving me at the times I was most unsure of what I was saying or doing. So I secretly took it back up, but by then our schedules were off. He would step out the door right as I would walk back in. I missed him all of the time, and he missed me too, but mostly I think he missed the nicotine. It was a bonafide love triangle, but one of us was better at tempting him.

So now I have been love with the smoker for three years, and for the past three months we have not said many words to each other. A dark-haired man with a thin mustache approaches me and asks me to go to dinner, and I wonder if it is even worth it to refuse a free meal. The smoker is too busy, anyways. We go to a cheap restaurant and he proceeds to tell me about how the humidity in Florida feels so good on dry skin and how to make money in photography. The whole time that the thin-mustached man is talking I am thinking about the smoker.

One night the smoker and I sat outside in someone else’s backyard for three hours. It was dark outside, but he was still wearing sunglasses, and I was wearing a summer dress. The grass was wet and the stars were bright behind the clouds. He told me about how he felt when he lit his first cigarette, when he was thirteen. The flame in his hands was the most powerful thing he had held up until that point. I told him about how I sometimes worried that I was insane. He proceeded to tell me that he felt the same way, quite often, especially after a long walk. We decided to take a long walk of our own.

The thin-mustached man thinks that smoking is a terrible habit because he wants to keep his voice pleasing to all of his fans. His music, he believes, is cathartic to young people everywhere. He tells me this over lasagna and I decide that I hate him. He also tells me about a story he recently heard on NPR about the economy. The thin-mustached man is too arrogant and too boring. I get up and walk out of the restaurant. On the walk home through the park I see the smoker sitting under a tree. I walk past him and he waves. I wonder what has kept us apart these three months. He loves my beautiful hair now, and I love the way that his clothes smell faintly of tobacco, but we miss those things about each other in silence. I decide to turn around, and he is smiling at me as best as he can. I sit down. He wraps his arms around me and offers me his last cigarette.