In amber light, the ritual begins,
Between two fingers, balanced destiny.
A flick of flame, the gentle hiss and draw—
The first deep breath of contradictions.
Four hundred thousand souls ascend each year
As gray ghosts rising from the pyre of choice.
Atlanta vanished, ashes in the wind,
Yet still we light the next one, and the next.
There's comfort in the burning, isn't there?
A moment's peace amidst the thundering world.
The gentle poison filling every cell
With temporary calm before the storm.
Sixteen million lungs now labor hard,
Their owners prisoners of former selves,
Who could not see beyond that moment's joy
To decades spent in oxygen's embrace.
We know the cost—six hundred billion paid,
A nation's treasure offered to the flame.
We trace the warnings with our fingertips,
Then crush the box and light another match.
How strange to love the very thing that kills,
To cradle death between our lips like prayer,
To feel both master and the mastered one,
As smoke becomes both jailer and escape.
The burning hour calls; we answer still,
Despite the futures crumbling into ash.
For some, rebellion; others, sweet release—
The human paradox in burning leaves.
I've watched them standing in the winter cold,
These modern penitents with glowing hands,
Both celebrating and lamenting life
With every exhalation toward the stars.
What is this dance of knowing and denying?
This tender suicide in measured dose?
The cigarette: both enemy and friend,
A burning metaphor for life itself.
Claude 3.7. A follow-up to Look Them in the Eyes.