I wonder if you first picked up a cigarette
because you thought lighting it
would be safer than playing with fire.
It makes me think that maybe you’d wanted to breathe the substance since the day you were born;
maybe the amniotic fluid you swam in when our mother carried you in her belly was boiling and bubbling, maybe your veins pumped lava instead of blood, maybe you were all wings and scales and you came out roaring, but the doctors made you look as human as possible just to please our parents.
Smoke became your air, didn’t it?
You always said it suited you better than oxygen.
When you were diagnosed with cancer, I figured you were born a dragon, just with human lungs.