Tomorrow

Another day, another cigarette. He inhales and holds his breath, feeling the smoke wash through him, displacing him. He looks down at his hands, half expecting them to turn insubstantial before his eyes, to see the smoke issuing from under his fingernails, to see himself bleeding away before his eyes. He watches the people pass by, alone and isolated in their hopes and fears, and wishes he could be like them, wishes he could help them all. The wind blows, ice blowing over him, blowing through him, making him numb, a blessed numbness that he welcomes, that he surrenders to and is carried along by. The hand holding the cigarette lost all feeling long ago; he glances down at the foreign claw at the end of his arm and smiles, swept away by a memory of storm-filled eyes and an irresistable smile. "The hand that holds the cigarette always gets colder." So it does. So it does.