Yarrow Smoke

By Sia Moon

 

I have never understood how people could smoke in their bedrooms.

How they could flick cigarette butts onto carefully crafted trays, leaving the remnants of their dreams to roll around on bedside tables– Last night’s breakup, tomorrow morning’s shift, their reckoning of the sun’s perpetual rise and incessant set.

How they could tuck their hands under their heads for lack of a pillow, leaving the stink of the day to permeate their thinning hair. And, worst of all, the way their walls might have yellowed over time, visible stains of misery exhaled and desire spit out. These people must have been up to their ears in smog; the city of London beckoned them to come home if they so pleased.

I knew a boy who never opened his windows to let the smoke out. He let it rise like a cloud until it eventually hit his ceiling and rained an ash of sorrow on him, condemning him to days of leaning against his wooden bed frame and rolling tobacco.

He refused to read the books I lent him, dog-earing their pages haphazardly and scribbling a verse in the margins so that I might stop pestering him. When the novels were returned, I was sure that the newly colored pages, which had turned a musty tan, were a result of his smoke.

I came by his apartment often, setting elaborately-crafted carafes on the coffee table in hopes that he might drink from them. I picked fresh berries from the bushes of the garden under his window, earning me scoldings from his neighbors.

I was, of course, unfazed, and continued to load my arms with ripe strawberries and supple figs. Spreads I made for him, serving him buttered bread and aged wine I had harvested from the gourmet store’s branches of aisles.

I sat with my legs bent like a lotus on his brown tiled floor, inhaling his smoke and exhaling affirming, though sometimes defiant, phrases. My occasional upset of course warranted screeching from him, and I thought he looked rather stupid: swaddled in blankets like a newborn with a cigarette between his thumb and pointer fingers, crying like a child who had fallen down and refused to be picked up.

But, intermittently, I rested his head in my lap, stroking his hair until he fell asleep and his tears dried into white flower-shaped splotches on his mid-face. Only when he was asleep would I press my lips against his forehead, leaving a dusky pink mark.

On a summer morning, I stalked towards his building. I had just returned from the countryside of France, where I had, in between my stretches of relaxation in a wooden country home, spent two weeks learning how to squeeze red grapes into wine. With a bottle cradled in my arms, tied with a pink bow at the cork, I rounded the corner.

The first thing I noticed were the leaves on the sidewalk. They were charred: brown foliage with black rims and holes poked through, as if fiery earthworms had made their homes in the trees above. I recognized the leaves as the ones that rested on the tree outside of the boy’s bedroom window. I had constantly begged him to open the windows to let some air in.

“The oxygen from the trees will help you breathe something other than smoke.”

The second thing I noticed was the garden. His downstairs neighbors’ lovely plot of fruits that grew, lived, and died, withered by the harsh northern seasons. It had been burnt to nothing; a few mere trees and bushes were left unprotected by a lack of leaves and a short-wrought iron fence.

Burnt blueberries and cherry lulled on the floor. They had been turned almost black, and a pungent smell wafted towards me. Not of jam or jelly; the most horrid and acute scent punctured my nostrils. A devastating scent— something garden-fresh had died here.

As I faced the sun, I decided that the boy’s building likely had no more inhabitants.

A few of the windows of the complex had chipped black glass, while other frames had no window panes whatsoever. The mahogany brick of the building had turned night black, and misplaced walls exposed wiring and wooden structural beams. My eyes traced the blackness of the brick, resting on the darkest and seemingly most burnt spot.

The third thing I noticed was his window. The plastic surrounding his window frame was peeling and bending, and from a snow-white it had been toasted black. Only the window panes were intact, though smeared with a charcoal smog. They had been lifted open, I noticed. The window had been cracked open.

The yarrows were in full bloom. They teetered in the wind, bending their cream-colored buds towards me as I kneeled.

“You need to breathe something other than smoke.”

 

Sia Moon is a New Orleans-based writer of black and Buryat descent. Her writing has been featured in the Riverbend Review, Discretionary Love, Broken Teacup Dept. and Lavendwriter Magazine. She has upcoming work in the Eunoia Review, Chewers by Masticadores, and the 826 National Anthology. Her work has won a Scholastic Writing Gold Key and an Honorable Mention.