When I lit that cigarette, she didn’t yell.

She just looked at me, eyes teared up, voice gone.

 

The cardamom still lingered on my shirt,

A scent she once called reckless yet warm,

Like the way I used to be.

Today, it made her flinch.

​

The air around her carried vanilla - soft and golden,

The kind of love that forgives more than it should.

She always smelt like that, even when she was hurt.

 

And beneath it all,

A dry, still sharpness, that of cedar.

That unspoken part of her that never said how much it hurt. That held it all in, until I noticed.

 

That one day, I forgot to behave. 

And from then on, I never lit another.