City living began to show its effects on me when a daily commute turned into a suicidal competition of who will live the longest. My work schedule demanded that an unwilling chunk of my day be spent waiting late night for a cross-town L train, a consistently torturous block of time that I was already anticipating this particular evening. After edging my way down the dripping cold platform, a glance toward the tracks to seek an approaching train instead revealed a cottony plume of white smoke, quietly filling the black of the tunnel. It had the dubious distinction of smelling of good smoke, in other words, something natural was burning, like five tons of newspaper, so of course, there was nothing to worry about.

After a few minutes, the situation eventually provoked some movement from my fellow passengers. Not only could they no longer occupy their time by peering down the tunnel for an approaching train, they couldn't necessarily peer at each other either. One by one, we were disappearing in an ever-increasing cloud of good smoke. People grudgingly began to move down the platform, farther away from the smoke. Still, no one was sufficiently alarmed to actually leave the station. After all, we all had a train to catch.

Transportation employees began to appear, the look on their faces wasn't inspiring confidance in anyone. Through the grill to the street above, the plaintive wail of a fire truck could be heard approaching. The sirens grew louder, and the orange-vested MTA workers began to disappear one by one in the smoke's liquid bath. Their voices echoed against the tunnel walls; our only assurance that they were still there.

Despite the pleasant smell, it was still smoke, and soon burning eyes and irritated lungs drove even the most hardened commuter up the stairwell. At the top of the staircase, an ever-expanding group of commuters waited hopefully for the appearance of the train. At this point, even if we could hear its approach, attempting to re-enter what was now no more than a blank wall of white, seemed a possibility that one by one we were all starting to consider impractical.

I made my way to street level with a few other quitters, pondering the length of time those that remained would devote to their quest for a train. And how many of them got upset when seated too close to the smoking section in a restaurant.

Shavaun Devlin is an artist and writer living in NYC and Portland and will be entering a graduate program for writing this fall.