the phonetic symbols wouldn't show up... neither would subscripts in the chemical formula for nicotine, but that's okay... just pretend such things are there...
Nicotine
nicotine (nik'e-ten')n. [Fr. N Lat. nicotiana- see Nicotiana.] A poisonous alkaloid, C5H4NC4H7NCH3, derived from the tobacco plant and used in medicine and as an insecticide.
Cigarette smoke is flooding my head, eating my stomach and drinking my blood, inflating my heart until it bursts.
Catching the pieces and patching them up and breathing me back into being to break me and burn me again.
Coughing my throat to shreds and gulping in smoke that was supposed to be air, I can't breath.
Clouds, warm clouds, roll into my eyes, over my hair, across my arms, my chest, my back, as they rolled off your tongue on the night I found myself in fog.
Cinders pulse painfully slower than my own life light, a jarring lack of synchronization that drags the smoke through my head down my spine where burns are still raw.
Hands can't hide the grime from ashes; it's all over me.
Hadn't I learned enough times, silk stains?
Hell, I am convinced, smells less of sulfur than of cigarettes.
How could I have dreamed I'd been there before when I'd seen the fog and watched how the sweat rolled from those who breathed it?
Now I've been to hell.
Count the nights I have slept since and you need not hear the words from me.
Check my room for signs, there's anything you want to find.
Clear the dead and dying lights from the surfaces, I haven't been in to do it myself.
Crying, I was surprised to find, is just as well as sleep, if you are very good at lying to yourself.
Hanging ash sometimes comes down without a tap, whether you want it to or not.
Heavy smoke, choking smoke, can come from even the thinnest, shortest roll.
Heat from the lighter never roars as loudly as it's offspring for a taste of smogless air.
Hungry flames don't really care what they're eating.
How do you tell two eyes a blistered body isn't burnt?
How do you pull the scent of smoke from hair without pulling both out?
How do you wash ash stains out of sheets with hands just as black, just as full of a smell that burns holes in silk?
Near me?- near me?- no longer near me, on me, in me- me.
Can second hand smoke kill faster than first hand?
Have you seen me recently?
Hot smoke doesn't care what it swallows (swallowed), hickory ash doesn't care if you smell (smelled) as sweet, hungry flames really don't care what they're eating (they've eaten), so long as it roars (roared) back.
Have I ever told you I'm particularly sensitive to nicotine?- I'm not, but it brings the rain… red rain, once.