Between Cigarettes and Silence

My mother died of a cigarette in one hand

my voice in the other

to a detached handle

a closed door 

a drawn blind

tight against the drywall

from a silence 

when the phone rung

to an unopened pile of words

when I knew the shout,  “shut-up” was always knocking.

My grandmother raised me from Mount Druitt.

She taught me to jump the train line, squeeze between the graffiti, the wired fence

the smell of tar, the greasy takeaway, to the side street of her saggy seat, porched, unsprung.

My grandmother raised me. She was a cigarette, empty beer bottles, 

a baked bean stain on threadbare foam. She was the Datsun with no rear mirror,

Dodgy blinds, when hot air was a fan of summer.

I love that she raised me to be tall enough to sit in her front seat

like a cigarette held between fiery red smackers, flicked behind the grey ash,

stomped in stubs, kicked my arse, kicked the butts beneath her feet.

My grandmother held her final drag, 

its heat still glowing in my cheek -

raised for the pavement.