(Archive February 2017) I Remember My First Cigarette

By Jocelyn Leger | Observer Contributor

I remember my first cigarette.

I was fourteen and my grandmother told me to hold it while she went into the store;

I remember watching the smoke dance off the tip into the air.. It had its own solo.

It pranced where it pleased and twirled into the once clean air, now poisoned. 

I wondered if it could turn my lungs into a ballroom.

So I set up the dance floor, sent out invitations and danced for the next two years.

When I couldn’t catch my breath during my routines anymore I discovered that my addiction to dancing had become detrimental to my health. 

I hung up my dancing shoes.

Over the year I had many partners 

I tangoed with Newports, slow danced with the Marlboro man, went swinging with camels, even disco with DTC.

I swayed and moved and jumped and spun and I learned the choreography to every song.

I didn’t dance for years – 

There were far too many blisters on my feet and my knees wouldn’t allow me to stand for too long but when you flicked your lighter that one night and looked at me I saw my old routines in your smoke. 

You asked if I wanted to dance and for the first time in years I heard music from my chest and felt rhythm in my breathing. 

This time around, I didn’t have many partners, I had you and a pack of LM Blues, and the three of us danced for the next year and a half.

We danced until one day you couldn’t keep up, and then the next day you told me how you hated the way I managed to dance everywhere I go.

But you neglect to remember that I had given up dancing, and you refuse to acknowledge that it was you who took my hand and spun me around.

Although you hated my dancing, you never turned the music off, and you would spend all night practicing new routines while I sat down and watched. 

You have quit dancing with me and found a new partner – but you took my dancing shoes with you. 

For that, I thank you. 

You have ridded my body of toxins and opened my eyes to bad habits,

My lungs are now longer a ballroom. 

I feel music in worthier places.

I hope wherever you and my shoes are, 

that they fit her better.