Smoke Stream

Second hand smoke is a real bother. Like flying bugs swarming around your face while one is trying to breathe. Definitely the smoke that people inhale into tender lungs has a more immediate impact to the smoker. In my perusing of journals and exercise books from twelve years ago, I came across this challenge to another trail of tar from nicotine. What prompted this writing I’m not certain. I suspect it was the smokers I saw that day, until, as is my habit, a stream of consciousness took over and spun a bit of fanciful reality. The quality of such unedited writing is often variable, especially when I can't read my own writing, so I've tried to spruce it up a bit.

Eight Men

Eight men smoking, lined up against the dark brown brick of a shopping mall. Different heights, ages and ethnicities. They are all gone now. Only a few stray cigarette butts left on the sidewalk. The air is clean and clear. The rain has settled the smoke onto the sidewalk where we will only wear the tar on the soles of our feet as we walk to and from the mall. No smoking outside, but nicotine tar inside where it will be taken into homes and family. But mostly on mops and in buckets when the janitors clean. Does the rain wash the sidewalks tar into the gutter?

“There’s a fine line between a stream of consciousness 

and a babbling brook to nowhere,”

~ Dan Harmon