Pheromones.

The door shuts, you pass by without so much as a glance. I know exactly where you are headed.

I watch you with inconspicuous eyes as the light from the bathroom leaks through the cracked door. I hear you frantically trying to wash it from your skin, cleanse your breath of it. Almost as if you hate it's lingering scent as much as I do.

The attempt is feeble. I sometimes wonder if you know that I can still smell it on you...that it pours from you like a thick smog and it takes all I can do to conceal my inner choking.  You always seem to sense the tension afterwards, but do you really get it? The eye aversion, my way of not letting you see the concern in my eyes. The turning of my face....not from anger, but my only effort to seek untarnished air.


You are well aware of my disdain for smoking in general, but have you yet learned my repulsion of you committing the act? It's not because you are participating in something that I dislike so much...it's how it changes you. Do you even know how different you taste when you've not smoked for 48 hours? What it feels like to actually smell you. To take in your pheromones, rather than have them masked by the bitter sweet smell of  cigars. That is something you take away from me each and every time you smoke...the true smell and taste of you.

  I cannot scold you--for it is your body, not mine.  You may do with it what you may, but it is my duty as your partner to fear what is to come of it. And it is I who has to live in the smoke.