XOXO

I wake up alone in bed. A winter chill has somehow drifted through the window I struggled to shut the night before. All I can do is pull the covers around me and huddle for warmth.

Yet the cold space next to me seems to have grown in size. Any body heat that my sweatshirt has managed to contain seems to vanish rapidly. The thought comes unbidden, as if it has leapt into existence in some lonely,

My great-grandmother was a lifelong smoker.

Even in retrospect, the image of her mystifies me. There she is: ninety-something, her body soft and small and folded, a silver braid peeking out from beneath the lace cap she always wore. And there, in an innocent corner of her Karachi home, is her favorite hookah pipe, with its green base and its strange, saccharine scent of burnt tobacco. Every day, after saying

I was eating at Chick-fil-A with my mom when she asked me if I felt loved. I smiled, and said, “Yes, now that you bought me food.” Her question staged within that particular environment reminded me of a tweet I saw that described each of the

two empty bottles of Advil lying askew, another only a quarter full sits upright

an ice pack long gone warm slouches against a dirty mug

an empty pack of menthol juul pods perches on top a mound of dirty cotton pads,

smudged and smeared with mascara that was supposed to be waterproof