our story begins in a borough, in a flat on the corner, with an outline of a man. he sits in his aluminum-kitchen chair
exceeding his passive mode. he draws deep lines in his forehead. cigarette corpses fill the ashtray on the blue, matching, formica table. he enjoys when his friends smoke – especially when they exhale quickly, immediately before they laugh or share the next anecdote. he’d breathe in all the ash and tar and ammonia in before he can reply with laughter, elongating his neck, pronouncing his clavicular, revealing his age through lines around his mouth and eyes. there are days when he’d buy a pack of merits for himself, light one, yet let the cigarette dissolve, perched in the ashtray like incense. his chest rising and then slowly falling with a satisfied ‘ahhhhh’. the man has a collapsed lung. the walls are stained with a light toasted, marshmallow-yellow. he’s thinking.