Lies in You

He smokes the tiniest cigarettes. He's smoking one now. It's so tiny and she stares at it thinking about how tiny it is. Her mind is consumed with its utter tininess. Why is it so tiny? Why does he pinch his fingers so tight? Why does he purse his lips like that?

He exhales now, slowly, but there is barely any smoke on account of how tiny the cigarette is. It's mainly just his warm breath. Air slightly heavier than the other air and she feels it on her cheek. Is he talking? There are  words, they are small and they drift over her and around. She can smell them.

"What are you saying?" she asks, still thinking about that cigarette. It's even smaller now. Tinier than even before. His eyes are closed.

"I see it," he says. "That thing that lies in you."

He's laughing now, he's crying.

"All this time," he says. "These days and these nights. These hours in bed and in the kitchen, watching TV and inside of you. All I could ever see was yellow, the sun. You were always the sun. But here, right here, now, out here under the sky I see it."

She takes a cigarette from her own pack. It seems gigantic in comparison. It dominates her hands and her mouth and the smoke seems almost comical. Obnoxious. She is very aware and she does not want to breath.

"Blue and yellow," he says. "I can see it now under this sky. You are not the sun. You are the grass. The green of the earth and on top of you there are beetles and inside of you, I can see the worms. There are lies in you."

She looks to the sky and deliberately pumps plumes of smoke into the air, clouding the blue. She can feel the weight of her cigarette as she positions it for another drag. Her lungs expand as she sucks the smoke within.

She's laughing now, she's crying, and with less control than usual because it is hard to laugh and cry when you are burdened with an unusually gigantic cigarette. And the smoke. She coughs and it is messy. She is ugly.

"It is true," she says. "There are lies."

He flicks the butt of his tiny cigarette onto the pavement. There are ants and he smiles. He leans into her and pushes some dangling hair to the side of her face. He pulls her head to his. Her cigarette drops from her mouth. It tumbles end over end and lands also on the pavement, that gigantic cigarette right next to the tiny one.

They walk now, in silence without cigarettes. There is a field and there are children and they sit in the warmth of each other on the ground. They do not move until the moon and the stars arrive.

"This night is clear," she says. "But tomorrow you will be rain."