For reasons unexplained a man watches idly as his long abandoned cigarette smolders away.
The weary ashtray droops but still does his job and carries the weight of 10 minute worries and burdens, there isn’t anything he can do but be there, to catch the burnt ember tears.
Smoke curls in on itself as it reaches for the horizon, leaving behind the sitting man.
In a room surrounded by the black and blues of life he sits, his life long over and the sun waiting for clearer days. He isn’t bitter or foul but he has seen the decay of man, the blurred social tightrope, and most of all he has seen the reflection of a aged and weary man.
2 minutes and the red glow vanishes, leaving only a black and grey graveyard of color and yet the man does not look away. Even extinguished the burned stump offers a memento of silence.
He can’t look away, even as his form fades, becoming one with the damp darkness. Nothing left behind but an idea, a trace, an essence. All that remains is that little white roll, burned around the edges and long abandoned, we do not what he was thinking and we do not know what was his undoing but he is gone, along with the smoke that reached his destination before he could.
No reason or logic can explain the comings and goings of those who walk the earth but every now and then we catch small glimpses of their lives and we hope that they are enough to explain; explain the final stages of this complex life led by so many but not finished by so many.