i never saw life as strung cigarette to cigarette
& maybe that’s why those small escapes are legal
but deadly. you smell money in a room
the way a shark tastes bait blood
in water, small eyes hunting the source
you would kill for as easily
craving that 40-dollar installment
that won’t fix anything but pause
for a while, in that taste you call controlling it
while the habit rides you in shudder & sweat
but the shark is innocent in his hunger.
what you want can never fill you
really. it just makes you more empty
Susan Daniels Poetry 
shark is very effective here… addiction is powerful. “shudder and sweat” –exactly!
Thanks, Jane…this one must have been sitting for a while.
Just the right balance of horror and sympathy
Thanks, Seb. That mix is just about right…
you reeled me by a throbbing heart in my mouth!
Wow–thanks, Deb. Kind of a hard thing to write, and again a few months later than I thought I’d be writing it.
“what you want can never fill you really. it just makes you more empty” This is so true !!!
Thanks…
you are 100 percent right on this. i remember as a kid with all those around me smoking. that shark was circling the waters for some time and then it took hold. first it was just smoking in the summer as a teen. but when i became an adult, it was full throttle. i’ve been able to cut back a bit this past week, but we had a wine fest and that didn’t help matters any….*LOL*. nice piece susan.
🙂
Actually, this is about harder stuff than cigarettes, but cigarettes work here too.
ahhh yes, i was fortunate to not really hooked on the harder stuff, except for drinking, but not a raging one.
me neither–but have seen it close up—waaaaay too close for comfort.
have seen it up close too. lost a cousin at an early age when he left life on his own terms. i was very close to him.
So sorry–takes too many of our best.