she smokes marlboro cigarettes with the bedroom door locked. i taste it on her breath, lips and skin everyday after school. her bed is a mattress on the floor. sometimes we make love on it and i wonder if she'd rather have her mouth around a cigarette than me right then. she has asthma too.

she is my second cousin. i didn't know this until two years after we began fucking and three years after i fell for her. i don't think it really matters. emily says if i ever made her pregnant she'd make me punch her in the stomach, heavy and hard. but i never would you know, i love her.

the smoking is killing her. i hid the cigarettes beneath the sink, but she just bought new ones and hid them better. she had her head down in the pillow, coughing, coughing until she coughed up sticky blood. i cried for her and she told me to stop being such a pussy. i told her i loved her and she drew another cigarette. kissing it ways she'd never kiss me.

some nights i sleep over hers. her father doesn't mind, he knows i know about the way he touches her, calling her her mothers name, and he knows i will tell if he tries to keep me away from her. she is so beautiful when she sleeps. grandma says she doesn't know what i see in her. oily black hair, acne, dark eyes and sharp limbs. i tell her we will get married one day and have children that look just like her and life will be beautiful. she cackles and mumbles, i hope not, under dying breath,

i want to know what she dreams about. i want to know what she is dreaming about when her mouth hangs half-open and i kiss it- just to feel a kiss from her without the usual roughness and teeth. does she dream of me? i dream of her. the nights away from her she's all that's in my head. i asked what was in her head and she told me i'd never understand.

but i want to.

it is summer now and i've brought us icy poles with the money from mowing the lawn on friday. she sucks hers and i watch her lips swell and turn blue. she tells me blue food colouring causes cancer. i offer my rasberry one but she says she isn't scared of cancer.

but i am. i am scared of the cancer because in my mind it outstretches it's spindly arms to take my emily. i take the icy pole off her and throw it onto the road. she calls me a cunt and a faggot and her feet are very loud up the stairs and down the hall to her bedroom.

and now she cannot breathe. i hear it, the coughing, then the gasping, then the nothing. the strings holding my heart up come undone and i lose my sense of balance. i fall rushing to her. death is taking my emily. right before me. i reach out to hold her and she pushes me away, she looks and still cannot find air. i wonder if her lungs are not working or maybe if she's forgotten how to breathe or if she had too much blue food colouring and this is cancer. i don't care any longer. she throws a glass at me, it misses and shatters beside me.

i love you, i say desperately, let me help you. her breath is back now, short and painful, if you love me, she struggles, leave me the fuck alone. and i do. because if i try and help anymore emily will think i do not love her. and i do, i do more than anything.

i fall asleep on her doorstep. when i wake the sun has set and the world is blue. i wander to her bedroom and lay beside her, brushing hair from her eyes. but this time she looks different sleeping. she is beautiful but the angsty, selfish emily is all lost. i do not cry. i know at least she died knowing i loved her.