Sentry

They stood on her desk, four in a row.

Sara had been smoking for only a year now, but the cigarettes (bleak sentries lit by the overcast sky fluttering through the window) were massive to her; the called and mocked her, they promised and forsake.

As a child, she had hated smoking. She had hated the idea of smoking, had carefully walked around cigarettes in the street—she would go silent when one was lit nearby.

And here she was, four lonesome cigarettes, standing on her desk in a row. Bleak sentries. Careless reminders. One last try.