April 28th 2014. 8:44 PM

Some days, she feels like she can’t breathe. Not because she didn’t want to, but because she feels like every breath she emitted contaminated the air and made the world more noxious than it already was.

Worthless. She feels worthless.

All her parents ever did was bring her down. They belittled every accomplishment, and illuminated every failure.

She didn’t know how much more of it she could take.

And her lungs. Her lungs always felt disgusting.

He used to smoke. And she remembers the breathless kisses where she could taste the nicotine.

It was addictive.

The kisses? Or the nicotine?

She could never tell it apart.

But nicotine is bad for you!

But it makes you feel alive. It creeps into your lungs and through your bloodstream and into your heart and brain and the poison spreads and spreads and spreads and the further it spreads the more you feel.

And so, Oppa smoked. But he never let her smoke. He always told her that she could have all the nicotine she wanted from his lips, but never from a cigarette.

And so, in her naivety and insatiable curiosity, she never stopped kissing him.

Kissing him? Or drinking in nicotine?

Same difference.

But when Oppa left, she was left with nothing to curb her addiction. And so, she turned to a cheap substitute. The substitute Oppa told her never to touch.

Cigarettes.

Oppa always smoked Lucky Strikes. And when she smoked them, the taste in left her nostalgia and saliva and a heartache so deep that she vowed never to touch cigarettes again.

But nicotine is addictive.

And the taste stays in , it never leaves. She rinses and rinses and rinses and nothing makes it better. Nothing removes the taste. Nothing takes away the heartache.

It settles into her lungs.

And so, every time she breathes, she feels like she is contaminating the world with lust and heartache.

April 29th 2014. 9:11PM.

She’s in sitting in class, with the teacher droning on, and she couldn’t feel worse.

Her fingers are trembling, and h