mother always told you never to drink or do drugs or smoke cigarettes or get tattoos or piercings, nothing nothing nothing that would disappoint her. but you were never a momma's boy and fuck if you could have gone without her, you would have. following the rules was ephemeral and eventually void, null, gone - the concept of it a smile curled hiding just behind the lips and waiting in your eyes, smug and sarcastic.
god, all the things you would never tell her.
all the letters she would never read.
the best thing about you was that you kept every carton of cigarettes you ever bought - when people asked about it your answer was always that it was a record of your life, or death, (however you see it), with a little more grit and grime than a spiralbound notebook or worse, a photo album.
when you were nineteen you made it your goal to try every brand you could find, malboros to newports to camels to lucky strikes and on and on and on. half of the packs you had were only half empty so you were always asking people's favourites and writing on the bottom in cheap ink, little initials. you stuck them to your walls and laughed every time someone saw them for the first time, so fucking concerned for your lungs and your body and god, do you really want to smell like that? that was always your favourite remark coming from your mother who cared little about you aside from how you made her look.
so you did your best to make her look terrible.
you kept things in every carton. on the inside, in sharpies of varied colours - the dates in which you bought them and, eventually, when all but one cigarette was gone. tucked into the pack would also be a letter of sorts - addressed to no one, sometimes a few words, sometimes a few pages. a calendar for your life written in smoke, a pack for every time you did something substantial or wish you could. the brand and its history always, always reflected the letter inside.
the only rules - every one must have dates, a letter, something small & meaningful, and a single smoke left. you never explained it to anyone, the rules, or the reasons, but you were consistent and the people who didn't have to ask why were the ones you liked the most.
and you were always looking so sad all the time, jesus. we all knew you weren't but there is something tragic and beautiful the way someone smokes the way you do. not to feed an addiction but to understand it and see things clearer, one after you've woken up drunk or fucked a girl or fallen in love, the important things. the things you think you're supposed to remember. you were always complaining about how people are depicted by well they were born on this date at this place and went to this college and married this girl and lived in this shitty apartment and ate this shitty food and died in this shitty way in this shitty space. you were always saying how you wanted people to know you in moments, how you wanted them to see how you felt about the strangers you've talked to laughed with had sex with, you wanted them to see how you saw the universe at night and how it never seemed so simple in the morning.
you wanted to know that if you died you would have no single sentence of famous last words, but hundreds of letters found to keep you alive; in words. in letters. addressed to no one. addressed to everyone. addressed to anyone. telling your story the way it was meant to be told; by packs of cigarettes, the barrel of a gun, smeared red lipstick, flower pedals long since wilted, words long since lost.
