Poetry by Lydia Tai

            ​Jo Guldi CC



Black Cloves and Bad Habits

“This really isn’t a habit you want to get into,”
said the blonde, wavy-haired stoner lighting a cigarette 
As I clutched my second pack of cigarettes
I ever had, naive, with lungs not yet filled with a black tar coating
Black clove Djarum cigars
My tobacco of choice
Standing outside the wooden fence that surrounded our high school

“This isn’t really a habit you want to get into,”
I told the first-time patients to the psychiatric ward
Where I sat in a hospital gown, legs casually crossed
Picking at a scab on my arm where the knife had incised earlier last week

And I laughed and wondered how long I’d been so cynical
“This is a habit I’d like to get into”
Your arms wrapped around mine weeks ago 
Lying in a pile of navy blue sheets
Pressing kisses into places
And making me feel blessed
A certain calm takes place

Nicotine gum comes at a price but it’s cheaper than the hospital bills
That came late to my Aunt Sally who died of lung cancer last year
And the cigarettes triggered asthma and lowered the effects
of Schizophrenia medication
Which didn’t stop me from lighting up whenever he came around

He was a smoker since the age of fourteen
And he liked guns and hated the gays and I could never
So we split in September and then I went
To a psychiatric ward again for the second time that year
Which is where I had met him, in June

I came home, and I’m calmer now
I need to be alone, and enjoy
My fleeting young adulthood
You’re only memories left in photographs on my phone

“It’s a habit I should get into”
I told my therapist
“What is?”
She replies
I say,
“Loving myself”

​

Lydia Tai is a twenty-seven year old Taiwanese-American female. She is published in Big City Lit and the Creative Drive Podcast. She is an advocate for those with mental health issues and has written all her life. She lives in Framingham, Massachusetts.

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