🚙 The day the car ashtray stays empty
Your family can't get out of a moving car. If changing the whole house is too much, start with the car.
A car ashtray knows a family's silence well.
From the driver's seat it might be one cigarette at a red light.
Open the window a crack and the smoke seems to leave.
But for family in the back seat, the air in the car isn't a choice.
You can't get out of a moving car partway, and saying you don't like it doesn't change the fact that you're in the same space until you arrive.
There's less escape in a car than in a house.
The stubs left in the ashtray look like traces of the driver's break.
To the family who shared that space, they're also traces of smoke they never intended to take in. The smell stays in the seats and is still there the next time someone gets in.