All the women in my family smoke

“He felt no pain, his death was instant”

words that lashed my brain
into a hurricane

an instant
how instant?

like coffee, a blink,
a microwave meal? The instant
it takes three women to click
a flame, to synchronize a suck
and exhale?

Dressed in black and huddled round
a plastic table, silver
trails of smoke swirled and slow danced
through caffeine steam.

I wash away the scene in
a pocket of my brain kept
for Oma, in her kitchen
tobacco flakes falling
into heavenly mud
Oma, slitting open a
melon with one hand, always
in her jungle of photographs
and souvenirs as bold and bright
as Rousseau’s paintings

Oma, whose rusty hips often
failed her, fell on that day and no
one caught her, our hands were too
full with sadness but
Oma helped me grow when I
was only four feet tall

You’re a tornado, she said, you grow from the inside

Mum has a different way of
smoking, with a droopy face
and cold-water eyes, one time
I hugged her too hard and she
screamed followed by

autonomous feet marching down
the driveway, me –
behind a bush in my camouflage
pajamas, an anxious action
man not wanting her to go

I fell asleep right there on
our street, snoozing to the
monotone lullaby of the M21

Next morning my sister tapped
me on the shoulder

“stop being a baby”

like Oma my sister could
spin as fast as she dropped
my eyes struck alarm when
blooming burnt holes puckered her
skin and I prayed myself into
a migraine

in her absence mum and I
filled our afternoons at the
cinema
accompanied by darkness
we could practice being
alone, together.

I’m older now, coming to
terms with gaps that can’t
be filled

the morning blinks into my
room through wet windows
and I promise I’m not crying

they’re just raindrops
scattered across the glass
staining my cheeks
with shadow tears

there’s a cigarette in my
hand, pointed like a pencil

I inhale
and exhale:
a smaller, ghostly version
of myself.