Smoking Pit

Cigarette butts
no longer linger
concrete, but
I swear the cloud
of smoke lingers,
the sweat of adolescent
anxiety – the suffocating
pressure to comply –

Names escape,
but I remember
smugness and
rivalry, and
the spine-crawling fear
of confrontation,
and indisputable
in my mind
are the scars
of being so alone.

(Written for Twenty Four’s 50 word Thursday prompt.  Image supplied by Deb Whittam.)

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VJ

Permission to write, paint, and imagine are the gifts I gave myself when chronic illness hit - a fair exchange: being for doing. Relevance is an attitude. Humour essential.

15 thoughts on “Smoking Pit”

  1. My compliments to the author.
    Hey, I’m writing an article on smoking. Something from the eyes of a marketer. Let me know if I can use some of the lines with proper acknowledgment of-course.

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  2. Pingback: 50 Word Thursday #23 | Twenty Four

      1. I think that’s highly likely. I think we all feel vunerable at school, you begin to judge yourself against others and there’s that tendancy to find yourself wanting as a result.

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  4. I have few good memories of high school, but it was the first time I was noticed as the creative type. I was even invited to attend a week-end, drawing workshop when I was fourteen. But even that was marred by tornado winds hitting the university residence while I was there. Interesting to hear that you were a teacher. I was also, but part-time. Still it gave me a decent pension for my retired years.

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      1. i was a nervous teenager – everything was so overwhelming. so that sweat was not just from the equatorial heat! nice to know your background is in teaching.

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