Under the buzzing florescent lights her fiery red hair was flat and dull

Her skin looked even paler than usual in the cold winter night

and the wind at her cheeks made them the same shade of rosy red as her soft lips, 

gently parted  and gingerly sucking the end of an American Spirit.

The corner of her mouth, when raised into the crescent of what would be a smile,

if there were any real emotion behind it,

revealed her teeth

too white to have been at this for long

But they will soon be tainted with the traces of this deadly vice.

The world has never looked so stark;

the white, blank snow

the skinny, barren branches of the lifeless trees

If her soul were a landscape this would probably be it,

blanketed by a layer of coldness built up over time

with a whole world of passion and color and warmth tucked away somewhere safer.

The cold of the concrete is numbing against the back of her legs

the loss of feeling will be noticed shortly,

when the last bit of white on her cigarette is erased by the ring of orange heat that responds to each slow inhale.

But she is not ready to leave just yet

the Earth is too perfectly dead to left alone and unadmired by its human mirror.