Ash and Sky

I quit smoking. Did it without you. But that’s not how I wanted it to be. There was a lady at the picnic table, smoking, flicking ash on the ground. I sat down anyway, hanging onto my coffee with both hands so I didn’t rip that cigarette out of her fingers.
 
Both of us faced the girl on the wall, the one that looks nothing like you but somehow does. I knew a girl like her, I said. Knew her, lost her and now I’m looking for her. The lady stamped out the rest of her smoke and put her yellow fingered hand on my shoulder. Maybe if you stopped looking so hard she’d come find you, she said all gravel rough.
 
She left. I stayed. Looking at the girl on the wall. Smelling tobacco until the orange end of the butt finally went out.