After the Firefight

He lights the cigarette with hands that still think they’re holding a rifle.

The flame shakes, not from wind, but from the leftover electricity in his nerves. The tip catches, glows, steadies, a tiny red planet in a world gone dark. He draws in and the smoke tastes like paper and metal and something bitter that has nothing to do with tobacco.

Around him, the night is rearranged. Dirt torn open, brush snapped, a wall chipped into fresh chalk. Somewhere close, someone is talking too fast, trying to narrate the last ten minutes into something that makes sense. Somewhere farther, a radio crackles and the words blur into codes and names and the calm voice of a person who wasn’t there.

He sits with his back against something solid. He doesn’t look at the ground too closely. He doesn’t look at the shapes that don’t move. He keeps his eyes on the middle distance where nothing demands a decision.

The cigarette gives him a job. Inhale. Hold. Exhale.

He counts each breath like he’s doing inventory. One for the ones who kept moving. One for the ones who didn’t. One for the sound he can’t unhear, the sharp tearing of the air. One for the way his body did what it was trained to do while his mind watched from a step behind.

His buddy’s hand taps his shoulder, a quick check, a question without words. He nods. I’m here. Still here.

He takes another drag and watches the smoke leave his mouth in a thin ribbon, then break apart, then disappear. It’s almost funny how fast it goes. How something can be there and not there, with no ceremony.

He thinks about how the cigarette will be gone soon, a small mercy. The filter between his fingers, the ash falling in quiet flakes. He flicks it once, twice, like punctuation.

When it burns down to the heat, he presses it into the dirt until the glow dies. He grinds it out carefully, as if doing it right could undo anything.

Then he stands up because standing up is what comes next.