Dear Tobacco,

I just can't seem to escape you.

I went for a walk at lunch yesterday with a colleague of mine. It's Spring, and so we decided to risk the breeze in exchange for the sunshine and headed out the large main doors of the building to get to our favourite perimeter sidewalk. Not three steps out and I was reminded that you're always there...


It was like walking through a ghost. I felt you, smelled you, saw you, tasted you, and instantly - again - I loathed you. Swarms of hypnotized teens and adults were laughing and talking their way through the fact that a cloud of your waste was hovering over, in, and around them. They were nursing each other through a few minutes of semi-ignorant bliss.

I couldn't help think of the rush the Bison must have felt running in thunderous herds, lungs flexing & blood pumping, nostrils flaring & comradery abound only to find their deaths (sometimes slow) on top of the corpses of those that ran before them. The haze you held over the people I passed yesterday shadowed, to me, the dust and fellowship that blinded the Bison to their own demise, and reeked of the souls you've taken before.

I guess you don't have any qualms about making sure they don't see ahead of each dose. No light at the end of the tunnel with you - at least not the kind of light people would like to see.