Lots of possibility here, or potential, I think. The mood is piercing and spot on for what I think you were going for. The goof up I think comes in two parts. You mix tenses from present to past, which tends to wreck read-ability and suspension of disbelief. And your order is out of whack. It’s the last drag, but then you talk about the face being illuminated, then it’s the last drag again. Could be really awesome with just making sure it’s all the same tense and looking at the ordering of the visuals. I’m not a fan of that many fragments, but that’s a style choice and could potentially work here.

This is definately a piece that could be descriped as being wax-poetic, which is not a bad thing.
My only editing comment would be the unknown/unspoken visual rule of ficly: A wall of words is hard to read.

Basically, a lack of line breaks causes alot of readers to skip stories, as most find it visually boring. Additional linebreaks and grouping parts together would have impoved this. It’s one of the reasons book companys have different layouts for a paperback book vs a e-book.

Take THX’s advice on tense, he rode me a lot about it and I became much better.

And Krultar’s suggestion also follows your stories flow, it’s already built in. Think about separating her facial features into sections.

This is not a re-write, changing tenses requires some words to be changed or moved around. And it’s OK to leave out “her” since she’s the only subject.

Pretend we are all standing in the room and we are invisible to her. It’s your job to explain to us in real time what you see at that moment AND what she is doing, like a radio sports caster.

She takes one final drag before the embers fade into her charcoal tipped fingers, her illuminated face darkens with the dying inferno of nicotine and thin parchment.

lips (dead end)

Cheeks
< return >
eyes
< return >
head

It’s got excellent bones, play with ’em.

After all that…I really love this. A powerful woman sits in the dark aging, not necessarily dying, but she might be waiting for an assassin…..things could go very wrong for either one.

Or maybe it’s the maid bringing her a chamber pot?

Or maybe it’s Joan Crawford sitting in the dark with a wire hanger in her lap,waiting for Christina to come home.

nah, it’s a leathery skinned old tart, past her prime, accepting with dignity the presence of the reaper, with one last cig.

All, thanks for the feedback. I felt that this piece was going to need some work. Much appreciated.