[ maiko ] cigarettes at nine thirty

If I reach deep beneath myself, I feel a pulsing heart thumping within. And I'm shocked - that I am real and here and breathing. Often times, I feel I can't find myself. I feel afar and estranged from my own self. I've become numbed to my own feeling, and my ability to perceive feelings. When I'm around Zuko, though, I feel something. It's a quiet pulse. A thump that rings just loud enough for me to want to smoke another cigarette and talk a moment longer. I feel warm. And then the cigarette starts to hurt my lungs - or maybe the act of feeling has begun to hurt my heart. I'm not sure; it's all too similar.

If my mother taught me one thing as a child, it's that love is a damned cigarette. Should I ever fall in love, I should remember how it will burn out with death. Crushing ends that fuse down to small stubs we wish we could hold onto forever. Love is like a cigarette, it can get you sick, but you never get sick of it.