Idea CJ and Debate Institute went to town yesterday and shopped. There's a great park there with all these weird exercise machines (but I left my camera at the resort because we had Readers Theatre practice).
Think of cigarettes "Your father named you after his favorite brand." My uncle chuckles sipping Wild Turkey. My father, a chronice smoker, smoked nine packs during my mother's labor. The story: he stood staring at a pack when the nurse brought news: "Mr. Fielding- a boy." Think of cigarettes. Think of my father, the white lobby, his pacing, stick after stick in his mouth smoke curling from his lips like surfer waves in a frustrated ocean. Think of cigarettes. Think of me. I became the smoke that made him cough the smoke that blackened lungs the smoke that filled the long work hours at a school he hated - inhale, inhale- to buy bread, to buy shoes we were poor, we needed so many things: pencils, pants doctor visits, dental work electricity, heat, milk. I am the smoke filled days the orange flare as he inhaled. My growth and deeds are the stubs in the cemetery of the ashtray. I got in fights at school with kids older, gave one ten stitches, threw rocks at cars nicking and denting two or three. I stole candy from stores, peed on my 2nd grade teacher's Datsun, hid in the woods. Still my father came, reliable, stern again and again, he came to get me from the office cigarette stuck in the corner of his mouth, gray smoke drifting into his graying hair. Again and again, he inhaled asked, "What were you thinking?" I think of the cigarettes in his hands - chalk sticks to mist one's name. Our lives are the inhale of burning particles Our lives are the release of gray truths. When I die let it be with smoke & fire. Let the consumption be brief. The ashes forever. Think of cigarettes. Think of my father working into the night grading papers, shaking his head, missing sleep, so that I could eat, so that I could grow and learn. Think of the smoke in his lungs. The smoke that was his life.
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