Exhaust

He walked through darkened streets as though sleep walking. The sun still hadn't risen and feral cats stalked unwittingly noisy mice while raccoons plundered garbage pails that waited for loud trucks to empty them. Bent street lights, like giant metal canes with blaring cycloptic eyes, stooped a bit lower to peer at the desolate sidewalks below. The wind whipped, lashing his exposed skin, sending cold threats deep into his tired bones. Exhaustion plagued him. He was drained from the late nights and early mornings. They'd bled him dry, tapped him like a maple.

Up in the distance, at the next corner, a man stood smoking a cigarette. He smelled him before he saw him, that acrid smell of smoke spreading itself menacingly across half a block's length, sailing on the air to assail his curious nostrils. If smoke were a person it would be pugnacious and loud; a child with a penchant for violence. Memories formed like faces in clouds as the smoke diffused, blooming fragrantly inside his head; of his parents smoking in the car with the windows rolled down in the winter; of a girl he'd dated briefly who'd smoked; of the smell of it on clothes; on skin. Years ago, when he worked in a computer repair store, he'd learned how easy it was to identify a smoker just by opening their computer. The computer was often tarnished, lightly yellowed and faintly smelling of tobacco. Upon opening the machine he'd see all of the internal components coated in sticky, darkly-colored resin. Sometimes, the computer's glass display would be permanently stained, all the color temperatures a few shades warmer then they would be otherwise.

Smoke needs to rub itself against all it touches, to leave its scent. Perhaps motivated by its ephemerality, its incessant shapeless shifting, it desperately clings to everything, everywhere.

Alive again on an unwashed shirt, or a woman's hair, the tips of fingers, or caramel colored teeth.