it's a foggy night, the mist seeping up out of asphalt and concrete, a reminder that beneath the flattened and fortified ground still lies the original swamp. streetlights create halos of orange, spheres of fire turned sickly in the dense air, dotting each corner. from her balcony she can see clearly only to the ground, to end of her block; beyond that, more pale dots floating in the mist, but no sidewalks, no front stoops. pedestrians appear only to disappear at the other end of the block, engulfed by the dimness, the pallor, the pixelation of the fog.
she lights up, the fire in her hands the only bright thing, a visual event marked by its difference from the rest of the scene. the fire sprouts at the first click, as though eager to purge the dank air around it. the night smells oddly natural, the stink of urbanity covered by wet wood, wet grass, rotting leaves, and now the dark brown tobacco smell as it fills her lungs and nose and mouth. the first drag is long, and nicotine races into her blood, heady and unkempt. her pulse, quickened by chemicals, feels louder and faster than anything else in the night, even the cars slowed by an inability to predict what the street will be like on the next block.
she exhales, slow and smooth, the taste of burning leaves coating her tongue. the blue smoke rises into the mist, hangs heavily between the water molecules. silver tendrils shoulder their way up into the higher fog, visible for long minutes after their release, maintaining form and color as they crawl upwards. the second exhaled breath rises more quickly through the path cut through the mist by the first, catching the old smoke, joining to it, both pushing higher together. the darker smoke from the cigarette as it burns lists laterally away from her hand, lazy as it goes, unconcerned with its shape and all the more twisted and looped for it.
by the time the cigarette is burned down, she is the epicenter of a halo herself, one made of blue and grey haze, the smells of old earth and chemicals and burning carbon, and a memory of hot sun and warm dirt and greening, browning leaves. from where she stands the lights in the street are even fainter, disguised once by fog and twice by smoke. as she turns to go inside, she sets the smoke to swirling again, and agitated by her movements, what once lingered around her hand and her body now sets itself on a course for the sky.