#30 Years Later

The boy eats sardines. Oil drips down his fingers and onto the plate. Years later he will abhor the small, broken fish.  A tin of Crown Prince smells like years of meager and lean.

Mother is on the couch. A cigarette’s last drag is clinched between her fingers. Her wrist is draped across a bursting belly. Soon he will have a sister, she says. At least for 6 weeks. Then he’ll be alone again. Years later he will forget that she ever existed.

He rubs his greasy hands on the carpet and watches as she thinks about yelling but instead smokes and crushed the filter in the green glass ashtray. The drone of the tv, its awkward laughtrack and splashy commercials, become the soundtrack of his childhood.

Years later, in front of the same screen, he sits and smokes and wonders if the nasty habit it all she left him with.