melodrama

Tonight I smoked the last cigarette of a man condemned, called up from the reserves, to be potential cannon fodder in this civil war we have created. He threw the empty pack into a corner of the wall outside the bar. He seemed surprised that I would smoke. I didn't know him well enough to confront him directly, husband of a friend of a friend, and anyway what could I have said that would have changed his mind? His issues run deep, and they are not mine.