By Myke Catilogo
I have always despised the smell of nicotine. So much so that I would avoid smokers like a child dodging strangers in the night. I would hold my breath around smoking areas, wrinkle my nostrils at the pungent scent of cigarettes, and cross streets just to escape the trail of tobacco smoke. All this for the sake of preserving my own comfort— my own space to breathe.
It was a smell that carried stories for me, stories of addiction, longing, curiosity, and maybe even sadness— stories that were never mine.
But then there was you.
All of a sudden, the trail I once hated transformed to a path I was willing to follow. I found myself wanting to linger in the smoke I once eagerly avoided. Not because I grew to love the smell— because I never did— but because you were there. Because standing next to you, even in the fog of tobacco smoke, made me feel safer than any clean air could.
While you smoked in silence, I couldn’t help but stare, like your presence was my own kind of addiction. It wasn’t the smoke I craved, it was the way you held the cigarette between your fingers. It wasn’t the cigarette butt I wanted, it was your lips on mine. Even if it meant holding my breath, even if it meant carrying your scent home with me, even if it meant forgetting my personal boundaries, I’ll give up anything to just stay closer to you.
The scent clung to my clothes, soaked into my skin, and nestled in my hair. And somehow, someway, I wasn’t bothered by it. For the most part, I was thankful for it, because it felt like you were still in my proximity— your presence still next to me.
I ask myself, is inhaling secondhand smoke the price I have to pay to spend a few more moments with you? If that’s the cost, then I’ll take every breath, no matter how bitter, just to be near you a little longer.
I may never light one of my own, but I will learn just to light yours. And if your hands are ever full, I’ll hold your cigarette if you need me to— almost as if it’s second nature to me. I’m drawn to you like a chain-smoker to his next smoke, pulled in like a moth to a flame, my unwanted addiction.
The way the cigarette burns down with every puff feels like an hourglass in reverse, with each ash that falls, every breath steals a little more time from us. It’s like I never want the cigarette to burn out, because as long as smoke is rising, you won’t have a reason to walk away.
The warnings, the skulls, the bold-lettered threats of death printed on cigarette packs, it doesn’t scare me anymore. If anything, it excites me. Because even if this wrecks me, burns me from inside out, I get to see your eyes, and that’s all that matters in the end.
Suddenly, cigarettes smell like love, the once painful smoke I used to avoid has turned into a tantalizing perfume that signals me of the comfort you bring. What once made me recoil, has now made me want to bathe in your fog. You’ve turned something I once despised into a reminder of how much I’m addicted to you.
Maybe I did carry stories of addiction, longing, curiosity, and sadness— addiction to the idea of you, a longing for your familiar presence, curiosity about what we could have been, and a sadness that with each passing moment, I may never get to spend more time with you— Because of you, the scent of smoke now tells stories that are mine.
I don’t smoke, and I never will — But for you, I’ll carry a lighter in my pocket, in case you forgot yours.
