So much has happened in one year. Gen has quit smoking, while I've increased my nicotine dosage. Because I can't wait for cigarettes to kill me. Just kidding.

Last June 2006, Gen and I posted a couple of odes to our favorite vice, smoking. Ahhh. There is something so darned sexy about a stick between my lips. And I am talking about cigarettes, mind you.

Death of a Cigarette Stick
Posted by Gen, June 3, 2006

There it was.
Recklessly between my
Fingers—a cigarette.
Waiting to burn,
To commence its death.

Flickers of red
Kissed the white sheet
As its Being lives—
Dead leaves
Turning crimson.

I take in a breath.
I take out its life.
A tart taste, it leaves
A statement: my life,
It, too, is taking.

We prolong our exchange,
This stick and I,
Idly killing each other
Waiting for the end.
Wanting for the end.

Its life's end, I sucked.
Crushed its burning life.
Now crumpled and thrown,
I gaze at it, envious,
It has served its purpose.

Cigarette Break
Posted by Yan, June 3, 2006

In the haze of cigarette smoke, she finds love
and passion and fear and hope.
A whiff of

Sanity,
a moment so lucid

that night lit by one fading ember
blinds the stars or the flashing
billboards across the street

She puffs for redemption
with sight so clear
that the wafting smoke

is a gray whirl and
a spiraling vision and
a cloud of possibilities

where, finally, finally
life awakens in that single flicker
between the last puff
and the search for
a crystalline ashtray