Searching for Smoke

I had seen his type many times before. He hung out in coffee shops where he ordered bitter lattes with curdled milk. He sat on the edge of the room at a small round table and sipped his overcooked resemblance of a latte while waiting for a familiar face to sit down next to him. It was in his own songs, the ones he wrote between each drag of his cigarette, that he found fulfillment. I listened to them in my head, measuring the choruses against my own ideas of life and happiness, and pulled my overcoat closer.