A stranger bought a cigarette the very same time as I,
At my usual shop where evenings slowly die.
We arrived together,
strangely complete,
Like two passing lines that were never meant to meet.
I smiled when the shopkeeper passed me the change actually meant for him,
Our hands almost touching in fluorescent dim.
It was nothing,
But only I knew it wasn't nothing.
He took his first puff the same as mine,
Smoke drifting upward in a mirrored line.
I heard a couple whisper in the back,
"He topped the very exam she lacked.
The one she failed not once, but thrice
He won it easy. Clean. Precise."
So why that smoke in his steady hand,
After conquering all he had planned?
And something whispered inside my chest:
"He won the world — but lost his rest.
He got the future he chased so far,
At the cost of his deepest scar."
The water in his eyes said more
Than trophies stacked behind his door.
A dusty brush. A silent court.
Her photo in his wallet — same hidden support.
And maybe he wasn't so different from me
Was he, or was I too blind to see?
The same old brush, the racket, the frame,
The same small photo. The very quiet pain.
I was him — without the win,
Just a paper calling it a sin.
Branded "failure" for the world to see.
Or was he just another me?
Maybe the winner and the so-called lost
Both light the same cigarette at the same cost
The same wounds, differently named,
One called "glory," and the other "shame."