Reliance [prose]

The world around me looks dark and intimidating. I am a ceramic ashtray, much too young to be sitting atop a stand outside of a New York City cafe. I'm only seventeen years old but I'm sure if you really took a long glance at me, you'd see my lined face, as if I'd painted on wrinkles for fun. Every particle of hot air sticks to me and I feel like I'm being smothered. I have hidden ears that detect the whistling of the stuffy August wind, heavy breathing, mumbled conversations, the distant muffling of dance music, the screech of dry car tires, and the pattern of red-hot stilettos on pavement.

I am almost blind; the haze of smoke and the tails of cigarettes cloud my vision and everything I see are shadowy silhouettes. I survive with my sense of smell and taste. Very often I inhale smoky, burnt tastes, but I know about many more like lingering alcohol, fresh sunshine, and clean rain that sweeps me into spring.

There are dangers that no one knows I have the potential to be in. More than once a day, my breath becomes labored by too many smokers shoving their addictions in my mouth. I choke, drowning in ashes...my skin charred and sore for endless hours. Yet I don't blame these mysterious smokers; they hide their secrets. My purpose is to understand all the people that use me because I want to see their lives outside of these damp, cramped areas.

I am something that is dying, though, and my goal is to preserve the smells people so often don't ever want surrounding them. Each draw from a little cigarette has a voice from the past, a story possibly portraying the person's deepest hopes and dreams.

I wish people didn't always go away after depositing their cigarettes. The tall figures always briskly walk up and take a stagnant breath, then imprint their cigarettes ends into me. It doesn't hurt. The ashes soften the way they push and shove to hastily dig a grave. But sometimes I wonder if these humans are like me, only having cigarettes as friends. And my biggest fear is that others will rely on addictions to live, just like me.

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Written 2/05/13 in my creative writing class. We had to personify an object listed on the board as our sensory write and we had a few days to work on.