March 2025
Claudia, my colleague, tells me it’s what killed her father.
“Lung cancer, it’s an awful way to go” she says, looking over at me when she says the second part.
I know, I answer.
David Lynch, my oracle, makes the headlines a month or two ago for finally getting to be free of this place.
“I loved smoking them” he said “and I don’t regret it” after his emphysema diagnosis.
The messages, the ads, the synchronicities pile up on me like the menthols in the porcelain dish on the balcony do.
I dump them out and worry about the other worries.
Maybe one day I’ll have stopped, just like my dad did when he “just decided to” along with alcohol and women, turning to Islam instead.
Or maybe one day I’ll have the occasional one, and by then it won’t be menthol, and I’ll live to 90 years old like Europeans who don’t have American lifestyles do.
Because I don’t think that Islam could hold me instead. And I don’t think I could have CBD or pilates hold me either.
Music does a great job of holding me. Holding me through it all. And also ******** me.
But still.
What else would I turn to right now? What else could I turn to right now that wouldn’t immediately punish my body under a 9-5’s demands?
Plus, we can’t discount the poetic value. And the taste and smell and flavor.
Oh and of course, being able to enjoy them with you while we still look good doing it.
But you should hurry up before I change my mind and decide to be done forever— which could be any one of these days and happens to be most of them.
No really, you should definitely hurry before I finally quit them. And quit you.
June 2025
I offered my great uncle a cigarette as we sat outside on the balcony of the beach house in Northern Morocco. He kissed his teeth and made a slight face “la2, ket kmi el menthol” (no, you smoke menthol).
I smiled pas plus and whipped out a Parliament between two fingers. It was the lucky I’d flipped upside down in the pack, a ritual I hadn’t practiced since I was 18.
It was my second cigarette in 5 days. Completely unforced and shared over glasses of atay and playing cards while overlooking the sparkling Mediterranean.
Two months ago, I’d lingered at the 7 Eleven counter for a little bit longer than the Habesha clerk would have liked, and I decided to buy the chic smokes instead of my usual admittedly trashy Marlboro NXTs. Less coughing and less guilt. I collect my wins and wear them like pins on a Girl Scout sash.
Two months ago, I’d decided that clinging to what didn’t feel good anymore was futile and that clarity was sacred.
One night, when I’d forgotten my Parliaments at home and found one last menthol in my car’s console, I nearly gagged trying to smoke it. I tossed it out the window immediately and watched it land onto the median beside me.
It’s where I last left you too, I think.
Today, I wanted one several times throughout the day. But being in a conservative city in Morocco and around my mima— who tells me to eat after each bite I take even with a nearly cleared plate and who keeps asking when I’ll get married to make sure I have one of the ceremonies here in Mghrib, as well as being around other family who I have to greet one kiss on the left then one two on the right and a tight hug after— I managed to stomp the urge out.
My mima loves me so much, she shouldn’t have to smell that on me when she embraces me.
And my lungs shouldn’t have to be introduced to tar when they were earnestly expecting oxygen. But mima comes first. Always.
And I come right after.
And you, well you don’t come at all.
And you won’t, not while I can help it.
Because it becomes extremely easy to strip the spurs off a cowboy when you understand that he’s just a coward.