Portraits

"All my characters smoke", said the writer. "they smoke with beautiful, long fingers, white circles of perfect puffs, passive, quietly, detached, to exceed all anticipations. outside of everything else, inside life, they smoke while moving time from fingers to lips. As if they know …the beauty of a smoker’s fingers is heavy, sharpen silk, choking, delicate. Breathe, lips to fingers, fingers to lips, awaiting, fingers sharing secrets with lips, a thousand fingers and a thousand lips with their own social life, moving continuously, a quiet chaos, voiceless noise, calm trembling. Puff, puff, puff from perfect lips rising up, dissipate in all things in a strange ritual of impregnate the fear. The fear of dying."