danse macabre
a silent dead
my wistful words
twirling on a thread

morbid bows
aching dips
a pang of music
from my own lips

pirouettes, no claps
stiffened formation
a stage near collapse

then—only silence
all from this cage
a sleeping ode
to my dying age

The quiet ache in the pit
is not only because I want you
but because a part of me recognizes
that it needs you.

Your eyes will never know me
but mine softly glow for you
as undying emeralds
cut from your light.

I cup the moon in my hands
from a safe space
on untamed ground
in a forgotten place.

The moon—
its glow, it lingers,
wrapping soft eggshell hues
around my fingers.

My head turns into a pile of ash
until your fingers flick me.
Smoke billows out—
curling in spirals toward the sky.

You light me up,
place me where you keep your lies—
between your lips,
sometimes held by teeth.

I burn slow for you,
but not fast enough
to chase away the pain
you’re trying to distract from.
Don’t blame me.
I was made to disappear.

Just like the things you tried
to hold onto,
but instead, cling onto me—
and I, too, eventually leave.

But parts of me linger.
A nicotine ghost on your tongue,
haunting your attempts to quit me.

I’m just a cigarette, though...
What do I know?

I’m a homicidal poet,
who breathes coffee like oxygen,
haunts digital wastelands—
until my fingertips bleed pixels
and my pulse hums in binary.

I bury bodies in blank verse,
resurrect them with rhyme.
Sleep for a century.
Repeat.

But I swear—
I’m fine.

In the shadows of a dead city,
where feet tap cracked pavement
and broken fluorescents blink,
there hovers a sphere of soft glow.

You might call it the sky’s cheese,
but I call it a nightlight—
hovering low like a searchlight
for the ******.

Never spoken of
unless it’s full,
a beacon for a wolf’s howl,
an ear for your secrets
when no one else listens.

Stain on my neck
the lips that pecked
in the parking lot
night hot
wore that sweater
one with the feather
image on the chest.

Stomach butterflies in flight
you offered me a light
cigarette between teeth
ignited by our heat
forehead sweat streams
you are now
my cigarette daydream.