A Long Story Made of Smoke
By Heather L. Davis
The small vinyl case like a mouth, the silver clasp like lips. Always with her, it spoke all day. Twenty times or more. Open it up and out came the word cigarette, which meant small pleasure, which meant relief. We sat in the back of a blue Datsun as it rolled over the Delaware Bridge, a mobile capsule fueled by nicotine, our mother on her way to work or back. We thought nothing of it, the invisible tar swaddling, the floating chemical hug. When I got older, I hid the case and gave lectures. Older still and I snuck to the cold stone basement to try it, to know what it was like. It tasted of home, of menthol and mystery, was a spiny sea breeze. Out of eight kids, only two never took up the habit. The rest of us liked that glowing, the fire in our mouths. And so we became smoke, the smell of it everywhere in our clothes and in the walls. We ate it, bathed in it, took it everywhere with us. Mom had her first one in nursing school. It showed she was a modern girl, helped with her nerves. She had an ashtray I loved—half of a huge mollusk shell. Now it’s mine, though we all quit years ago, except for Mom, even after the cancer, the crumbling jaw. The ashtray sits on my dresser, insides no longer sooty, but pearly as heaven. It served her well, holding twenty-thousand days and nights, life measured in crushed Salems, their pink lipstick tips proof of minutes burned clean through. I take off the fused glass ring—sky blue— embedded with swirls of remains, place it in the shell for safe keeping. Half the beauty and half the sorrow of the world rest in that sea creature, which lit each place we lived, the homes where she took care of ten people or tried. No doubt she’d be annoyed by this storage arrangement, maybe even notice the anger in it, then slowly smile, slowly nod because it’s funny after all, how our hapless bodies end: ashes to ashes, bone to glorious bone.
Heather L. Davis is a poet, fiction writer, and essayist with an MA in creative writing from Syracuse University. Her book, The Lost Tribe of Us, won the Main Street Rag Poetry Book Award. She works in international public health and lives with her husband and two kids in Lancaster, PA. She often misplaces her bank card and puts the creamer back into the cupboard instead of the fridge.
12/12 / Poetry Reading and Conversation with visiting poet-in-residence Nicole Cooley + local writer Caroline Cabrera / The Gallery at The Betsy-South Beach, Miami Beach, FL / Live and Live-Streamed on Instagram Live/Facebook Live at @swwimmiami / 7-8:30 pm EST / Free
One workshop remains in our Workshop Series--SWWIM Lessons: From Prompt to Placement: “Surfing Submittable with Jen Karetnick – Keeping your head above water in the poetry submissions process” on 12/10 (register here). Price: $80/workshop. Time: 7:00–9:00 PM (EST). Where: Zoom.
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So evocative of the joys of smoking, even after the cancer. So true that smokers were enveloped in smoke. Lovely portrait of mother. And that ashtray. Maybe the foreknowledge of ashes was part of the allure, along with the tranquilizing effects of nicotine.
Wonderful poem!