When Smoke Was My Prayer

When Smoke Was My Prayer

by [Zain]

I lit my first cigarette

like a match to memory—

my hands too young,

my heart too old,

trying to set fire to silence.

The smoke curled like scripture

in the back of my throat,

and I believed

that pain made me holy.

That coughing was confession.

I inhaled not for pleasure

but for presence—

because in that moment

between drag and exhale,

I disappeared

just enough to survive.

I smoked at funerals.

At breakups.

Outside hospital doors

with trembling hands

and shaking promises.

I called it coping.

I called it control.

But mostly,

I called it mine.

Years passed,

ashes piling up in the corners

of my lungs and my life,

until my daughter,

barefoot in her pajamas,

asked,

“Daddy, why do you always smell like fire?”

I didn’t have an answer.

Just excuses wrapped in paper,

lit with habit.

That night,

I stood outside alone—

one final ember between fingers

that had forgotten how to let go.

I watched the flame flicker

like a heartbeat.

Then I crushed it beneath my heel.

Not in anger,

but in mourning.

Because quitting felt

like burying an old friend—

a toxic one,

but a friend all the same.

And in the silence that followed,

I heard her laugh in her sleep.

Soft.

Real.

Alive.

And I knew—

for the first time—

what it meant

to breathe without burning.