Breathe

My mother, she was dark haired and wild. She thought she knew what she was doing. She inhaled the drinks like she inhaled air. She drew in the smell of a stranger's soap and cologne. She gasped as his body collapsed on hers. Nine months later, she spluttered for oxygen as she was told to push. Two seconds later, I took my first breath.

As I grew up, she wasted her breath. She took drags on cigarettes and blew out the details of her dreams. I soaked in every word she said, smoke and all. It wasn't nonsense to me back then. It seemed rational. Or, rational enough. I drank the details of the things she had once aspired for; the things she had wanted to accomplish and become.

She was living her life through me. I should have realized it the day they put her on the oxygen tank. Or, better yet, years before when she had pushed me to go to school and finish all my homework. When she had told me to go out with my friends and party, so she could hear me rattle on about the details later that night. When she helped me mail off my letters to all the colleges I had hoped to apply for, and when I would come home to find my acceptance letters already opened and her grinning face. I should have understood that the puffs of air that forever circled around my head were not words of encouragement. They were her demands, because they were all she had left. I was the only person she had authority over.

She had been doing it for my whole life. Everyone else could see it, how brainwashed and tied down I was. It had only dawned on me when I got to see it from the outside.



I hadn't been in school for a few years then, and I was coming home to visit. I wasn't alone. There was a man by my side. He was the man of my life. He stood tall and held my hand without any shame, and I let him do so because he had taken it as his own. The diamond on my finger showed that much.

I let myself inside, smiling as I did so. I was excited for my fiancee to meet my mother, and to see where I had grown up. Where I hadworked been pushed so hard. I found my mother, it seemed, exactly where I had left her. She was sitting at the head of our two-person table, a pack of Camels in front of her and the ashtray full. A cigarette hung from her lips, like usual, but her hair was lighter than it was dark. Her oxygen tank was in the chair beside hers. The tank had seemed to take up my place here, and it didn't look as if it had been touched lately.

"Momma," I said, shutting the door behind me with a kick of my foot. "Its been too long, Momma." I would have thought she would smile, as I came towards her with my arms open. The mom I knew years ago would have at least smiled.

I ignored this, continuing to wrap my arms around the only family I had ever known. I held her tight, my face buried in her tobacco smoke scented shirt. I felt her move her hand to pull the cigarette from her lips.

"What do you think you're doing, girl?" She asked, as I let go of her. She replaced the stick in between her chapped lips again, sucking in and exhaling. "You expect to leave me here, and then come back suddenly? I told you to come visit sooner, didn't I? Oh, and who is this? Huh? Tell me, girl, tell me."

"I told you in my letters, Momma. I couldn't come visit! I've been settling down. First, I got my own little apartment after I was hired at S&R. Then, I met Drew, and just recently I had to tell my landlord I was moving out! I'm moving in with Drew, Momma. I'm getting married!"

I plunged my hand into the circle of smoke in front of her, only to have it slapped away moments later. "I don't care, do you understand? You should have visited sooner, you should have come and seen me and told me about all of this earlier!" Her breathing was flat, and her lungs rattled.

"I'm telling you now, Momma," I said, looking her in the face. I looked between her and her tank. Oh, how I wish she would put down the smokes and use it.

"It doesn't matter! You should have told me earlier!"

That was when I knew. I was getting married. I was moving in with my fiancee in a few weeks, into his big, beautiful home. We were going to start a family and live happily ever after. She didn't care, though, because I hadn't covered all the details for her. Not soon enough.

For the first time, the smoke burned my eyes. It made my eyes itch and tears fall. My sobs were gasps and my breath was quick and shallow. I wanted to curse her, for doing this to me. I had finally realized what she had done. She was a poison. She had been polluting me. One word, one dream, one cigarette at a time. Every breath came out more and more hazardous, and even more controlling than the one before. I could have never stopped her.