It doesn’t happen all the time, but there are mornings where I wake up craving a cigarette.

Not the mouth feel, or the taste. Not the smoke coating my lungs and staining my fingertips. Just the practice of it, the art. Stretching out in the morning air in my pajamas, coffee in hand, smoking.

My body hates it now. It’s tolerated it the last few years. Before that it was scarcely a blip. I could breathe it out of my body, and my blood. It’s barely ever registered as a habit. Just purely as a love for the sport.

Though I am less self-aware overall as I age, this is one thing I am conversely self conscious of. Who would get near me, breathe me in, touch me, kiss me? if I smoked. It becomes a social delineator. Once it’s done I can’t leave the house.

And I don’t want to socialize with other smokers. Especially not ones my age. These are not my people.

Which begs the question, who am I? To be so singularly acceptable in this private transgression. To crave a sexy cigarette, without anyone ever seeing it. To put my body through yet another vice, and more toxins it can’t afford. What the fuck am I actually doing?

Maybe it isn’t just the cigarettes.