The Last Cigarette

The best part of a conversation is the eight seconds between the match and the first exhale. Everything gets decided in there.

It's minus fifteen. We're under the awning of a dep that stopped selling to us an hour ago, standing on the salt.

"Il a pris le chien," you say. Then, quieter, in English: "He took the dog."

The streetlight above us buzzes. A cruiser rolls past at walking speed, the one in the passenger seat looking at us the way they look at people standing still in the cold.

I offer you my last one. You say no. Then you take it. That's how I know you're from here.

We don't talk after that. Just pass it back and forth until it's gone and our fingers won't bend.

You raised that dog from a puppy. It was yours before it was ever his.

Smoke goes straight up. No wind.