A Loveless Kiss
March 16 2026
I have to admit, it still looks sexy
to see her smoke.
Is it how she holds it,
waving dismissively through the air
with her extended wrist
as if she owned the place?
Is it the curl of blueish smoke
when her hand is still
that keeps drawing my gaze?
Or is it the twin plumes
spiralling out her nose
with practiced ease,
when I can’t help but think
of a wild mustang
rearing up
and snorting its defiance?
Then there’s the hint of red
on the used filter
where she held it in her lips,
reminding me of a loveless kiss
the morning after.
A transgressive act
in a puritanical age
that wags its finger at vice.
But she airily flips the bird at convention
and does what she will
judged or not;
which, I have to admit
is sexy as well.
Sexy, despite the half-smoked fags
crushed and bent
in a puddle of ash.
The stale smell
infused into the walls
and mouldering in her bed.
The yellowed fingers
and ashtray kiss,
her stained teeth
and wrinkled skin.
A bad habit
that’s unattractive
yet sexy all the same.
Despite the fact
that even with the cancer
she refuses to quit.
I see more young people (and at my age, who isn’t young?) smoking on TV and in movies. Apparently, it’s glamorous again. And as much as I revile the habit, I have to admit that when an attractive woman holds a cigarette, it is sexy.
Perhaps it’s something about defiance (denial?) in the face of death, a stubborn belief in eternal youth one can only envy. Is it the loucheness, the hint of debauchery? Or is it the refreshing departure from the narcissism and hubris of the wellness brigade: that life is for living, not longevity? Or perhaps there is something about the orality of smoking: the intimacy of a cigarette — which, you can’t deny, has a phallic connotation — between her lips?
I’m both drawn and repulsed. And also resigned to the way social convention swings back and forth with every fad and each generation. What’s old is new again, and I fear it will always be thus.
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