more of a vent: smoke

Strongest person I know. Are you gonna put your emotions on the line of a piece of rolled up paper?

It’s not just a habit. Habits are biting your fingernails. Biting your fingernails doesn’t leave a 5 year old child in a Tinkerbell costume wondering why her pixie dust can make mommy smile through the tears, but still, more and more tears come. My grandma stopped smoking. Sucessfully. And it killed her anyway. Cancer, of course. Brain. It’s as if aunt char died. Do you want to explain why a habit killed zachary’s grandmother? 3 years old, the very first death I remember. I have two memories of her, and she’s a wisp. Literally. I do not remember what she looked like. My memories have a pasted picture from pictures I’ve seen of her. She is this body of space in my mind. A body of space on a hospital bed. A body of space in a chair with her children surrounding her. A body of space that only sometimes forms into human features, features of mixed people, jumbled memories. I don’t know how my relationship with my grandma was. I loved her. I know that. But I lost her so young that I don’t remember any memory of our relationship, except for a light flickering across space where a smile bloomed..not even bloomed, but dimmed lightly for me. Things have consequences. And whether it could come back to you 5, 20, or 60 years from now, there’s no way of knowing.