Whom I Think Of When I Think of Smoking

The couple at the breakfast table who have been together for three decades. One of them begins to heave with such violence that tears well up in his eyes while he bends over double like he’s about to collapse. The other slowly cracks his egg and gets on with breakfast.
My best friend who has stopped wincing every time she hears her father cough so loudly that it travels like a scream of a ghost up through the floorboards of the living room
My brother with whom I would like to grow old