This poem is dedicated to my grandmother. Note: discussion of addiction, abortion, death, neglect, and other potentially distressing content.
I sit and I soak
In the smoke
In the house
As the house did the same
Like whiskey in a barrel.
Picking up hints of char and peat
Deep earth and sweet
Smoke.
It’s the lie I tell myself.
I don’t know their name.
I know their scent when I smell it,
When winter winds blow,
When the bus stops have soaked in the same as her carpets,
Her pillows,
Her children,
Her life.
I choose not to know.
I don’t ask. If I did, then I’d go
And I’d buy me a pack
And another
And more
Just to smell it.
The smoke.
It feels like her,
Feels like home, even though she didn’t always,
Feels like I can’t breathe deep enough to capture it all,
Like my lungs are too small
Like it makes me cough
Like I can’t breathe
At all
When I smell it.
The lie I tell myself, that I’m like whiskey rather than carpets.
Imbued not stained,
enhanced not damaged,
and the biggest lie:
That I hate it.
I don’t.
I do but I don’t,
I can’t,
I won’t,
And the lies aren’t convincing at all.
When I curl my lip smelling the sweet smoke, a face of distaste as I step closer to the bus stop,
When I cough to force it out, knowing that what I want is to inhale, to breathe deep,
And I do.
Outside the movie theatre, somebody smokes one of her cigarettes. I don’t know his name and I haven’t seen the movie, but I know the smell. I join the conversation anyway. I breathe deep when he exhales, I stand closer than I need. I leave when he’s finished her cigarette, not when the conversation’s over.
I choose not to look at the pack.
Like I choose to cough when I have the strength to,
When I can deny
The sweet smoke.
It’s not sweet in scent,
Nor in feel,
Nor at all,
It’s smoke but I want it as if it was sweet,
It feels sweet in my mind
In my heart
Like she does.
I don’t look at the packs as I sit in her house.
Somewhere I know the name,
Through fog,
Through smoke,
But I don’t want to know it because then I might go,
I might buy,
I might soak in the walls of my home
Like whiskey
But careless.
There were two kinds. One can’t have a name, I think, though I choose not to know; how could they name what you make for yourself?
I remember the machine, the process, the fun of it all,
Measuring, pouring, tamping down shreds,
Laying the little paper tubes that came in cartons and made such a nice noise when she’d shake them,
So musical
Fun.
Laying filters,
The kchunk the machine makes when it all slides together,
Tobacco and tube and filter combined
To make her cigarettes.
How can they name that? They can’t.
They were hers.
So was I.
I remember the fun. The game of it all. The joy of making, like crafts or toys, like building blocks, I remember the parts I wasn’t allowed to help with.
Too young. Dangerous.
I remember how I wouldn’t be too young, one day
One day, how I’d get my own
Machine
My own tubes
My own filters
I’d draw on designs,
Make patterns and more,
I’d make colours in smoke,
And everyone would want
My cigarettes.
I don’t have the machine.
I could.
I lie myself that they aren’t made anymore,
Nobody makes their own,
The machines are defunct,
The tubes aren’t sold,
The process dismantled,
And dead
Like her life.
How it smells more like home than she ever did,
How they’re sweet when she wasn’t?
Not harsh but not sweet
Simply there
Like the house
Like me
We sit.
We soak.
She never went down to California,
To stay with cousins for a month;
Never got sick how they’d say she’d just drank too much,
Never threw up how everyone would just look away
And say
That she returned home a bit slimmer
A bit better
Her pants fitting looser
With a few pounds less.
She didn’t.
Did she think of California how I think of her cigarettes?
Did California feel safe? Did she want to stand close
To breathe deep
When somebody else had California on their lips?
Did she want
To share it?
The lie. The many.
That anything is one thing,
That smoke is smoke,
That bad is bad,
That sweet is sweet and simple as that,
The lie.
She didn’t go, not then, but that doesn’t mean never.
I don’t know the stories
I don’t know the names
Of her cigarettes
Her losses
Her triumphs and failures
I don’t know who lived in California,
I don’t know if they live still.
I don’t know what cigarettes they smoked
Nor she.
I sit and I stew
And I wonder
How she did.
California.
Cigarettes are bad, they say it so often,
With pictures and faces,
sneered lips in sweet smoke
(I do)
But California?
Not bad.
Sand and surf and pleasant people, California; and if she’d gone?
If she’d returned a few pounds lighter?
If the date had been kept, the aisle still walked,
The dress still worn but fitting less tightly,
The ring sliding on more easily,
If she had?
Would I still sit here, and soak in the smoke
Of her life
Of her house
Of her cigarettes?
How much did she wonder?
How much did she think?
She never said
California
Until she knew.
The smoke was coming for her,
Enveloping,
Wrapping her sweetly to breathe deep
Until
There’s no breathing again.
She said California, where ever before,
She’d only said honeymoon,
Only said that some babies are large,
They grow quickly,
That’s all,
She never said
California
Until the end.
But she did.
She knew.
She surprised me
Who thought
She’d forgotten.
Or that she’d forced herself to cough
So many times
In the smoke
That she’d convinced even herself that it was acrid
Bitter
Horrid
And true.
The lies we tell ourselves.
She remembered one truth
Forgot many others
Apologies made but how many?
She didn’t go to California, but she said in the end;
Did she say why she did go?
Years later?
No pounds to shed save a hundred or so,
More grown,
And capable,
I’m sure she told herself,
He drove me to the airport,
He’ll be fine.
He wasn’t.
He was never taken to California.
As far as I know.
It wasn’t even considered.
Older sister, perhaps,
Heavy honeymoon baby
Eight pounds in six months
“It happens,”
She always said.
She said California, right at the end, but did she say sorry?
Did she say airport or mall, did she say why she left?
Did she even in briefness admit that she did?
Did she wonder?
Did she sit
In her bed
In her hospital
Did she think?
Did she want
One
More
Of her cigarettes?
I don’t look at the label.
If I don’t know the truth of their name
I can’t buy them.
I tell myself.
For explanations, and more information about this poem and the woman who inspired it – for an exploration of what grieving entails and some of how I worked through it – please visit this link for an essay I wrote about this poem.
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