SMOKE

It’s funny, the human fascination with smoke.

Every writer has flexed

and fucked

and abused the metaphor for centuries

“It vanished like smoke”

“Her body wound like a thin stream of smoke”

“I inhaled his presence like a cloud of smoke.”

We are enamored.

Schrödinger’s element.

It is there when we restrain ourselves from touching it,

And it disappears when we reach for it.

It looks solid, it holds form,

and then evades our grasp as if to taunt us.

Not transparent, not opaque.

Is it arrogance?

Smoke, the reminder of the fire we started?

The flame that humankind willed into existence in desperation.

Or is it fear?

The remnants of something we need to survive,

but could die in the thrashing embrace of.

Does it arouse us,

to watch the smoke?

The lingering aftermath of the thing that we feign control of,

But are at the mercy of?

Do we envy the smoke?

(If I could disappear as quickly as I appeared,

I would.)

In my 65-degree bedroom,

On a duvet covered in dog fur,

She puts her cigarette out by smashing it between two fingers.

Like a nal period placed on a hand-penned letter.

I reach out to touch her,

But she rolls over and her mind escapes

to an empty corner of the ceiling.

Knee-deep into my own cliché,

I sink.