Cigarette Smoke // FILLIE

Loved It

m i l l i e

My fingers race across the board, pausing every so often as I think carefully of another sentence to pour into, yet another one, of my pathetic 'Letter to Dad' collection I've piled up over the past year or so.

How do you write letters to someone who will never even read them? How do you address something to a place you're not even sure exists?

How are you supposed to carry on after a part of your life, a part of you, can't?

I express these thoughts into the letter, asking the man who past away merely eighteen months ago.

God, it's really only been that long?

Since his passing, everything seemed to draw itself out, not like a sketch, but like how you draw out a letter to make emphasis.

His death did that to time.

It made days seem longer, nights take forever to pass, and minutes feel like hours. His death did that. Or.. at least it felt like it.

"Sweetie?"

I turn toward the noise as my mother slowly enters my room, a knock still echoing on the walls as my fingers rest on the keys.

Slowly backing away from my laptop, I rest my elbows in the armrests and face her completely.

"Need help with something?" I guess curiously, watching as her eyes glance to my laptop screen.

Shit, she wasn't supposed to see these.

"No, just checking in. What're you writing?" She questions with a polite smile, her eyes now trained on my letter.

I go to switch to a new tab but her hand beats me to the mouse, her finger scrolling up and down the middle gear to reach the start of the unfinished letter.

"Oh- it's kinda personal to me, Mum." I hesitantly protest, carefully replacing her hand with my own on the mouse as I open a new tab.

A steady silence fills the empty space in my bedroom as a sorrowful gaze washes over my mother's face.

Noticing her expression, I start to excuse what I know she already saw.

"It's- ah.. it's nothing, Mum." I insist simply as I glance at her for a moment; turning away when I'm faced to see the past emotions surfacing in her features.

"It's sweet, Mill. He would've loved it, really. Let me know if you need anything, I'll be in my room reading." The woman speaks with her words falling out slowly at an unstable pace.

Leaving with those to be her last words, she solemnly walks out of my room. Shutting the door behind her as she heads further down the hall to her destination.

'Reading?' Not again. You'd think by now she's think of some other nickname for 'crying about your dad' besides 'reading'.

Guess somethings you can't change.

-+-

f i n n

I left Sarah at her aunt's after giving the middle-aged woman a polite hug and a gentle nudge to Sarah as a way of saying 'goodbye'.

The teenager had only cracked a faint smile my way as she then said her goodbyes to me before following the put-together woman into her lovely home, never looking back once.

She'll be okay.

I start down the short line of stairs off of the porch and to my black challenger, climbing inside and igniting the engine quickly as I back out of the driveway.