Cancersticks

Growing up on self-spun love and vices.

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I remember promises made in the darkness of a carton-box shadow
Twin girls in serious chichat upon a game of hide-and-sick (seek)
I'll give up my liver, one says. You give up your lungs.

When I was eight I stole all my daddy's cigarettes and,
the book of matches mama uses to burn wood for cooking and,
smoked until I couldn't breathe.

(I still got the better end of the deal, I know this as I
watch my sister retch-purple the nights we go home
from the religious festivals where alcohol flowed free and cheap,
and motorcycles skidded off cliffs the dawn after,
because their daughters didn't keep on emptying their beer bottles.
She lacks the enzyme but doesn't mind the alcohol poisoning)

When I was eleven I stopped trying to hug my daddy from behind.
There are three perfect circles on my left arm, just above the wrist,
all burned by hot cigarette ash, reminders that some things just aren't worth it.

When I was thirteen I found that more than a handful thought it was cool
to take drags from cancersticks and watch their teeth and fingers
turn the yellow of crumbling paper. I could match them fag for fag for fag,
but I don't do that insanity anymore.

When I was seventeen I saw someone die of lung cancer,
nicotine swirling in his blood and seeping the marrow from his bones
and the light from his eyes. Something felt like breaking in my own chest.