Today I saw a girl. Bundled up in the cold Chicago weather. Starbucks coffee sitting on the bench beside her. Cigarette in her left hand. Pen & not-so-blank page in her right. She looked sad. Though the sadness may have been due to not having quite enough hands for her needs at that moment, I think there was something in her swiftly moving pen that told me otherwise. As I walked home, I imagined that this is what she wrote:

All it really is
Is one unhealthy addiction
Replacing another.
But this one
Is a choice.
And as the smoke
Curls about itself
Disappearing into the air around me,
I watch the pieces of you
Still in me
Float into nothingness.
And though I hate
The taste it leaves in my mouth,
Soon there will be
No traces of you
In me
And it's gotten my pen moving
In ways it hasn't in years,
Writing off all those pieces of you
Still in me.