Photo by Jsme MILA
by Guy Biederman
“If you can’t smoke in heaven, I’m not going,” she says.
“Maybe there’s a smoking section; it is heaven, after all.”
Radiation, remission recurrence— you name it, we accept it, and smile in the hazy room.
“Pass me a cigarette, darling, I won’t smoke.”
I shake out a Winston from her pack, she taps it on her breakfast tray, and a gracious Aide removes the plate of untouched eggs.
“Go ahead darling,” she whispers, “give us a light.”
Guy Biederman is the author of Lost In Translation, one-inch punch fiction, Black Lawrence Press, and five other books of short prose and poetry.
