| I hate your smoke cigarettes. I hate everything about them. I hate the smell of your burning tobacco hanging in the air, I hate the infiltration of your smoke into my lungs, I hate the way my skin feels after having spent too much time in your environment, I hate the way that your stench follows me home, settled in my clothing like unwashed railcar hobos. I hate the way it destroys your voices, taking mellifluous tenors and sopranos and dragging them from the bumper of a 1987 Chevrolet over six miles of unpaved gravel. I hate the way it turns your incandescent teeth into the flickering fluorescents of condemned building boiler rooms. I hate the time it takes you away from our conversation because you need to go outside for "a minute." I hate the time it takes you away from sons and daughters and grandsons and granddaughters because finally your body decides that the only way it can convince you to stop poisoning yourself is to grow a rapidly metastasizing cluster of malignant cells in your vital organs, until you're forced to choose between the cigarette and the oxygen. I hate knowing which of you I'm more likely to lose earlier. |