Matter of Time - J.R. Harrington

My mother’s menthol cigarette smoke tinges my memories tobacco-sticky. I remember watching her smoke at campsites deep in New York forest, thinking how glamorous it seemed, the tinge of blue evening entering into the white smoke as it swirled like silk in the air. My brother and I spent our time on these camping trips pretending rotting stumps were battlegrounds for our action figures.

One of my best friends couldn’t stand menthols, didn’t understand my nostalgia for them. When she went to buy me cigarettes I said regulars were fine, so that she could share them. If that isn’t love, I’m not sure what is. We would walk home from school and stop in the woods to smoke, skipping butts into the stagnant creek winding along the hill we sat upon.

My other best friend stole menthol cigarettes from his mother. We would shelter on his back porch to smoke out of view. Afterwards, he would spit on the concrete steps and dab the lit end of the cigarette into them with a sizzle, before throwing them over the fence and into the driveway. The sizzle lingers in my mind, more of a snatching spritzing sort of sound than a prolonged boiling-oil noise.

I used to smoke my mother’s menthol stubs, late at night. I used a candle, with a flickering flame, and incense matches to light the candle. I would sit and chainsmoke until I felt good enough to go to bed. But I never smoked when I saw my love. I didn’t need to. He was the

high. His presence tore me up in a way that wasn’t quite so dangerous as smoking. Now I’ve lost him, and I’m quitting smoking.

It was only a matter of time.

The memories that cling to me are the ones in his bedroom, with the suncatcher scattering sporadic rainbows and his hands firm on my wrist, feeling my pulse to ensure I’m real. He said I’m like the dead wife in the movies, glowy and ethereal, he said he loves me but it isn’t romantic. And perhaps it never was, the way your own memories get retconned by time.

Since I was little, I had this memory of my mother singing a song to me. “Raindrops on roses and whiskers on kittens,” but I found out at eighteen that my mother never knew the song. My grandmother had been the one singing it to me, “brown paper packages tied up with string.” Of course I love my grandmother, more than anyone, but I still wish it had been Mama, her husky lovely voice, calming me down.