Smoking Break by Louisa Campbell

                          Matt Niemi CC
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​​Smoking Break


Sometimes it’s as good to suck in death as it is to breathe out stress. Outside the boot-scuffed service door around the back, we’d stand, slightly hunched, maybe one foot on the wall behind us. Some of us would squat down on our heels, stare vaguely at disgruntled dandelions or trampled cheese and onion packets, grit scrunching beneath our boots. As we arrived, we’d say, ‘right? or twitch our mouths in half a smile. This was our tribe, our clan. I loved the silky slip of Rizla from its dinky pouch, the meditative rolling of  Old Holborn on my knee. Some preferred ready-mades in gifty little boxes with the reassurance printed, priestly black, that SMOKING KILLS! Some of us lit votive matches, but if we were truly blessed, we owned a Zippo, felt that satisfying suck, heard the little magic clang as the lid flicked up its lighter fluid incense. Most of us used both hands to open Zippos; two palms cupped in supplication, as if the ship of our lives had already gone down and we were taking our chances in the lifeboats. Non-smokers walking by would keep their heads bowed so they couldn’t catch our eyes. Were they embarrassed at our rituals, our poorly-thought-out, quiet suicide? Or did they understand with every smoke-filled exhalation we were saying to the world, enough, enough, enough?

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Louisa Campbell's mental health-related poetry pamphlets are The Happy Bus (Picaroon Poetry, 2017), and The Ward (Paper Swans Press, 2018). Her first full collection will be out with Boatwhistle Books in the Spring of 2021. She lives in Kent, England.

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