Smoking :: Sunday’s Whirligig

The 12 prompt-words from this Sunday’s Whirligig are as follows:

valves, church, coughs, weirdness, liturgy, furtive, kids, smell, heads, dabbing, swinging, scissors

Tobacco, paper, fire, breath… the liturgy of the smoking ritual… Which reminds me: just last week I smoked two cigs in a church parking lot. I was waiting for my friend to pick up a free turkey inside. I felt so furtive… On Thanksgiving Day, too, I felt furtive, smoking outside while the kids sat within. Counting their little heads all in a row there along the tableside when I came back into the house, I thought, “God! How I must smell to them…” 

*coughs*

Ugh. I wish my lungs had valves like French horns, to let the phlegm out. The real weirdness of smoking is wanting one when your lungs ache. I could be dabbing coughed-up blood from my lips with a handkerchief and still want a smoke. I could be swinging from a scaffolding, hanged for a crime I did not commit (of course), and pretty soon you’d hear me say, “Hey, could somebody get some scissors or something and get me down from here? I need me a cigarette!”