I couldn’t remember what had kept me here in the first place. Trying to look back that far nearly snaps my neck. Your face no longer holds an image in my brain, but I remember your words. They painted a picture themselves.
“Smoking hinders your sensibility. Sight, smell, taste, touch, even your ability to feel. Trying to smell your dinner sometimes strains my head. Not because it is bad, but because cigarettes are just so **** good.”
I stared at the overflowing ashtray and grief engulfed me as if I were staring into an uprooted cemetery. With analyzing every crinkled **** smoked down to its perimeter–except for one that was half smoked, and leaving a cigarette incomplete was uncommon for you, so this was undoubtedly the first and last one you didn’t get to finish–I imagined this to be an accurate illustration of what your lungs must’ve looked like when you last sat in that shabby recliner you considered your throne. You held your words with grace and pride when you coupled them with a smoke, and if my memory serves me right, I don’t believe you spoke all at when you didn’t. The majority of the time, you would push your throne closer and closer to the television like someone was going to take it away from you. Who knew one day you would be right.
I picked up the ***** half-cigarette from the tray and blew off the relic it wore like it was a dusty picture frame found in an attic. Nothing about it called to me, at least not the way you pretended it did.
“I need my smokes! It’s morning. I can’t start my day without one.”
“Some ***** at work blabbed about me taking smoke breaks and nearly got me suspended.”
When you developed a cough, they began calling to you in a different way.
“If I stop now, then all this would be for nothing.”
“It’s been proven that people become sicker when they quit.”
When you would try to quit:
“You might want to leave me alone for a week, I’m going to be grumpy until I get over the first phase.”
When you would quit quitting:
“You’re stressing me out, I need one!”
These statements have played in my head in incessant unison, and with forgetting the sound of your voice, they have taken the sound of mine. I keep the conversation going to prevent the silence from driving me mad.
Holding the tip of the cigarette against my lips, I pretended I was kissing you, and for a moment, I swear, I tasted you. You tasted terrible.
I lit it and rid myself of the only thing you left behind, for your sake
(to finish what you started)
and mine.
