Blame

A Story by scarlynn

I don't blame my dad for smoking cigarettes anymore. I don't blame my mom for hating him for it. I don't blame myself for never knowing what weed smelled like and thinking it was the same thing as a Marlboro. I always flip one upside down in every pack I get and make a wish on it when I smoke it. My wishes are never anything beyond what I've always wished for - I want to be skinny, I want my love to see me how I see him. I want unconditional. I want to be rich. I light it and breathe the flames in, and nothing comes truer than you did back in July.

"Those are gonna kill ya," a biker hollered at me from the Walmart parking lot. Wow, I thought, that was a cat-call I hadn't heard before. And on a motorbike - I never rode one. Uncle Miro rode one and my dad rode one, so I would never ride one, naturally. Some contradictions were allowed in my life, like cigs, but others could never have a place. I was only a hypocrite to the third degree, nothing hotter.

Dear dear, how bad was she? Did she stare up at you with big black doe eyes and hiss as she slowly pulled your finger out of her mouth? Did she taste like Crowne Royal? But I bet she never painted pictures in your bedroom with her mother's sweater stolen and hanging off her like the shakiest willow tree. And if she did, shame on me.

I couldn't begin to describe the emptiness. Chronic, clinical. Catastrophic. Catatonic. I thought maybe we really did share parts of each others' souls, and mine was vacant and dead as hers was in the dirt. The dirt that rose up to level with my bed every morning that I had to trudge through to put my clothes on. Unwashed clothes that she wouldn't have liked, "leggings aren't pants".

I'm so sad about you.