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# cigarette smoke
- URL: https://www.fsm.ink/cigarette-smoke/
- Published: 2026-09-11T13:47:34.000Z
- Updated: 2026-09-11T13:47:34.000Z
- Author: Staff
- Tags: Poetry

*by Kayla Jarppi*

a box arrived in the mail—layered tape

 securing its collapsing sides, her address

pasted to the top with purple glue: a care

 package from Hammond, WI—contents

coated in cigarette smoke, sticky brown

 staining the pages of an anxiety workbook,

 the binding torn and worn. a cream sweater blotched

with yellow, hole in the sleeve. stickers reading *future*

*pharmacist* in pink bubble font—

maybe she’d know the difference

 between a pharmacist and a psychologist

 if she’d asked. and maybe she was trying to be nice

with the handwritten card she’d found at the

 local bar—picture of a raised fist

patterned in the american flag on the front.

 maybe she’d know the difference

between the fist of resistance and this fist

 appropriated for conservative

nationalism—maybe she’d know the difference

 between politics and basic fucking

human dignity if she’d taken the time

 to know me, her queer daughter—

the words *I love you* fester

 on the cardstock,

her signature sealed

 with perfume

to mask

 the smoke*.*

> A recent graduate of Lawrence University, Kayla Jarppi is an interdisciplinary poet and scholar currently pursuing a PhD in Counseling Psychology. Often writing with unfiltered honesty, emotional vulnerability, and deep attention to the world and its injustices, Kayla’s poetry spans the personal, political, ecological, and theoretical.