Untitled - Juliette Humphreys

I watch him fail to light a cigarette against the wind.

Little sparks erupting than disappearing in an instant like dying fireflies kept in a jar. His back is hunched over. Through his light tee shirt I can see every vertebrae of his spine and I have the strange desire to rub my knuckle down them to see if they knock at different frequencies.

Please don't look at me like that, he says. We are standing outside of his garage. The ring camera his mom watches close to us. He is beautiful the type of way that ice is beautiful when it melts. He is beautiful like a piece of toast.

Like what I ask.

Like I'm stupid.

He clicks the lighter on again but the fire vanishes before it can even touch the cigarette.

He asks me if he should quit smoking and I tell him no.

Every morning, he sprays tobacco vanille by Tom Fford on the soft parts of his neck -- wrists -- chest peaks but after he smokes Newports, he smells stale and I feel guilty about how much it stokes the fire in the pit of my stomach.

This lighter is fucking dead he says and drops it on the ground. He removes the cigarette from his mouth and places it behind his ear,

I'm gonna go to sleep.

I watch him walk away.

I worry that the only thing I will ever be good for in life is to watch people walk away.

He lets himself back into the furnished basement without saying goodbye. He doesn't have to. He knows that around midnight I will tiptoe down the creaking staircase and he will be half awake and we will say no words and we will sleep together and in the morning I will ask him if I can wear his socks and he will say no and I will want to cry.

I pick up the lighter from the ground once he disappears. I click it on and let myself feel the heat of it against my forearm.

He once told me that to have asthma is to breathe fire. He also told me that the only thing humans are capable of feeling is lost, but he also said that this lighter was fucking dead and as I finally start to smell my skin burn I realize that it is not.