[updated] the allure of a silent burn

would you believe me if i told you i sat on a park bench for 10ish minutes yesterday watching a woman smoke a cig? felt like i was watching nosferatu all over again.

i watch you, not just a woman anymore, but something else, something other. your cigarette is not an object, it’s a living thing, pulsating with dark magic, glowing at the tip like a dying star. the smoke unfurls from your lips in long, lazy ribbons, and it’s like the very fabric of time starts to tremble. each drag of the cigarette pulls the sky tighter, as if you’re stitching it together with threads of ash and fire. i’m watching you unravel the world, thread by thread, piece by piece, as if you’re the only one who knows how to hold the pieces together just enough to make them break.

you’re not just breathing smoke, you’re breathing fantasy. the air around you ripples, becomes thick with some strange, impossible heat that makes the shadows dance and twist in ways they shouldn’t. the ground under you hums with a pulse that matches the rhythm of your inhale, as if the earth itself is holding its breath, waiting for the next move in some ancient game. i’m watching a ritual, not a habit. each exhale carries something dark, something forgotten by gods, a secret so old it has no name, only the weight of its history, only the hollow sound it makes as it fades into the air. the smoke, it’s alive. alive and hunting, chasing something only you know.

and then, the smell. it’s not tobacco anymore. it’s decay. it’s the stench of time that has forgotten itself, the earth rotting beneath you as you burn it away with your indifference. it’s the scent of long-lost castles, of ruins left to crumble, of ancient things sleeping in the dark. i want to close my eyes, i want to run away from it, but my body refuses to move. it wraps itself around me like a vine, choking me with its pull. i taste it on my tongue. sharp, bitter, and too real. it’s as though i’ve walked into a dream i can’t wake up from. the air is thick with it, and i can’t escape.

you don’t blink. you don’t see me. you’re not even in this world anymore. i realize, in a strange, sickening clarity, that i’m watching a ghost.

no, not a ghost, something darker, something that feeds on the world around it.

your eyes hold no warmth, no life.

they are windows to a place i’ll never reach, a place that doesn’t belong to this world, a place where only darkness is allowed to breathe. you’re not alive, but you’re not dead either. you’re something in between, suspended between two worlds, and i…i…am nothing but a helpless observer.

i can’t look away. i want to scream, but the sound gets caught in my throat, like it’s been smothered by the smoke that rises from your lips. my chest tightens, my lungs burn with something that isn’t air, but i sit still, like a puppet with its strings cut, my body betraying me, refusing to move. you’re not smoking a cigarette. you’re smoking a dream, a nightmare, a curse. and the worst part? i want to follow it. i want to chase the smoke, to let it fill my veins, to let it take me somewhere else, anywhere else.

but i stay. i stay, and i watch, as the smoke wraps around your body like it’s claiming you, like you were always meant to be consumed by it. and i know, deep in my bones, that you are both the hunter and the hunted, the spellcaster and the victim. you are the smoke, and i am the witness -

lost in the trance, caught between disgust and desire, between this world and the one you’ve created with every exhale.