By E.S.
On a fine Monday afternoon, a day when the streets were covered in thick blankets of snow, when one had to take care not to slip and tumble onto the frozen sidewalk, when it was so goddamn cold that tears would freeze before falling to the ground, I stopped just off Centre Street, going some way from the road for a quick smoke by a snowbank at the mouth of an alleyway.
With a cautious hand, shivering in the cold winter air, I lit a cigarette, marvelling for a moment at how the embers persisted at its far end, how they slowly ate away at its outer layers. Red faded to grey, ember became ash. I held it up to my mouth and breathed. The cloud of smoke that escaped as I exhaled was satisfying, although it could scarcely be distinguished from the puff of any man’s warm breath on a cold day. It slithered gracefully through the air, disappearing into the cloudy winter sky.
I finished the cigarette and my gaze fell upon an untainted white mass that was a snowbank. As I gazed at it, I could not help but wonder…
Fire and ice.
What would happen if I were to toss a lit cigarette into a pile of fresh snow? Would the snow burn away? Perhaps it would melt out from the center, resembling water in a toilet bowl flushing and swirling into the pipes? Of course, I knew logically that the cigarette would eventually burn out, that it would not last long in the face of wet snow and water. It was simply a question of how long it would burn. And yet, I still hoped.
And so I tossed it, tossed it into the snow with high hopes and grand dreams.
Like a lit birthday candle thrown haphazardly into an Olympic-sized swimming pool, the cigarette simply snuffed itself out before it had a chance to graze the surface of the snow. I felt a single tear roll down my cheek, saw it drip from my chin and fall gently into the snow. It left an indentation in the snowbank, deeper than anything that stupid cigarette could have made.
Partly in anger and partly in frustration, I tried to step on that disappointing cigarette. Unfortunately, I was wearing sneakers, and I failed to consider that in crushing the cigarette beneath my shoe, I would be stepping deep into the snow. It immediately seeped into my shoe, thawing around my foot and dirtying my newly washed socks.
I could not hold back, then, from sobbing bitterly.
Parallel Magazine 