A DATE WITH DEATH ; The Original Draft
What begins as rebellion becomes routine — a slow romance with decay, a momentary escape from the weight of being.
By: Drusilla U.
The delicate, weightless gasp of our souls’ exhale — fleeting, beautiful, already fading.
The rising smoke hugs your chapped lips, ripped and torn at the seams, dried blood clinging to the cracks — a stark, anxious reminder that you’re wounded.
Yet you no longer feel the wounds. They simply exist: concrete, undeniable, but distant from lived reality. So far removed from consciousness.
Perhaps we’ve all quietly agreed to condone the constant harm we put our bodies through — the small violences disguised as pleasure.
Once pure. Untouched. A perfect vessel.
We taint it slowly, quickening the pace of death because it feels good. It feels real. Something that feels this good couldn’t possibly cause that much harm, could it?
You only live once.
It’s just a rite of passage — a ritual of youth, they say.
Are you really a college student if you aren’t drinking? Smoking? Partying?
You sit alone, cradling a book, clinging to your homework like a lifeline — because it is. The only way not to let yourself or your family down.
But on nights when others laugh, post, and glow under neon lights, you feel that ache.
The quiet jealousy.
You insist you don’t want it, but you do — the illusion of freedom.
What you don’t see are the hollow eyes behind those smiles.
The way those “friends” cling to one another like leeches — enabling, numbing, erasing.
Not always, of course, but often enough.
Sometimes a drinking buddy is but a drinking buddy.
Smoking.
My throat tightens at the thought of my younger self watching me fiddle with this small, dual-colored stick that reeks of tobacco.
It fits perfectly between my fingers.
I play with it like a toy.
I tell myself I control it. It doesn’t control me.
But then I see her — that younger me — covering her dolls’ eyes at the sight of who I’ve become.
She doesn’t know yet what it took to get here.
The smoke isn’t the true horror; it’s only the symptom, the visible scar.
Look closer: the hollow eyes, the faded expression, the tangled hair, the smile that tries too hard.
My soul screams while my mind consumes my body like an incurable disease.
Smoking begins as rebellion, becomes ritual, then routine.
What starts as curiosity transforms into dependency — a lover that holds you, chokes you, promises comfort, and delivers decay.
At first, it’s just a kiss. Then a fling. Then something more intimate, intoxicating, binding.
You wake up one day and realize: you’ve entered a pact with death.
A slow, hedonistic, deceptively peaceful suicide.
You make this cycle of self-destruction feel familiar — so routine that it becomes a place you call home, even though it’s not a refuge.
That dizzy, fleeting high. The burn in your throat. The ache in your chest.
It’s not even exciting anymore — it’s familiar.
Forever chasing that first high — the one that lied, said you were invincible.
Now, it’s the only thing that feels real.
You’re caught in smoking’s grasp, a trap you can’t escape.
When I smoke, I feel the world dissolve — its edges blur, its weight forgotten.
I’m sinking, yet floating. High on this cloud.
There’s a hum behind my eyes; my brain loosens, as if a knot has quietly come undone.
The streetlights flicker. The air thickens. Nothing matters anymore.
Hum…
Just this breath. Just this moment.
Me and the night — unreal, but almost perfect.
I’m on a date with Death.
You can never go back to Earth once you’ve had a taste of Mars.
He’ll ease your strain.
You’ll be waiting in vain.
I got nothing for you to gain.
I once promised myself I’d never smoke.
I remember my first kiss with a cigarette — my first taste of rebellion, my first betrayal of self.
It was night.
Mom was driving, and her friend’s purse sat on the seat beside me.
The city lights were sharp, cold, metallic.
I was fifteen — invincible, restless, ready to devour the world.
My hand slipped into the purse. Marlboro Gold.
Three would be enough.
She wouldn’t notice.
I didn’t know then that the smallest acts of rebellion can become the biggest chains.
Because smoking isn’t just an addiction to nicotine.
It’s an addiction to illusion — the illusion of control, of calm, of maturity.
It’s wanting to forget that you exist, if only for a moment.
To blur the borders between body and air.
Sometimes, we don’t smoke to feel alive.
We smoke to forget that we are.
And sometimes, we smoke to feel anything at all.
