Another Brick in the Yellow Lung Road

I think that you’re a cigarette
Small, and bright, and warm
you shine
If I could taste you on my lips
And light you up
Every breath would give such tasty grit

You drift in the air around me
So seductively you curl

Hanging, suspended,
close enough to smell
a soft hand about to fall on my shoulder
and wash the tension from inside my chest

And if I looked inside your head, what burning architecture,
what lace cathedral
of shining embers and pure white ash

But I have to put you down
And not go back
Because you’ll kill me
slowly,
pleasantly,
until you run out

And I’ll wake up,
wondering where my breath went,
holding my arrhythmic heart,

And reach, gasping,
for another
cigarette.