Cigarettes and you
are one in the same.
Inhaling your scent is so very deadly;
To my heart instead
of my lungs.
Though I can’t
seem to get enough of either.
Regarding my head,
the thoughts that seem to swell
when you're near, disappear with the smoke.
Two addictions that
I can’t shake off.

Suddenly, it's not love anymore, it's a memory.
I'm alone, drunk in a bathroom and my thoughts don't crawl to the section of my brain where you are located.
You don't have a place in my blood, I can count on one hand the times I've said your name in the last year.
Does that make a sinner because you were once my God? I'd swallow every syllable uttered in my direction, scripture licked from my lips, and wipe my face clean with your affirmations.
And I was clean-bogged down by a perpetual hangover and hands that won't ever stop shaking and hair that never smelt like anything other than your cologne and cigarettes- but I was clean, I was saved.
And every time I knelt before you, I was saved again and again.
So call me unfaithful because I have forsaken you, though long after you did me, and you did, you did.
You've been gone so long, I can't even remember what your voice sounds like.
All I have is a memory of a grin plastered on a face, all teeth and a head reared back: gleaming, mirth incarnate.
But that image can't force me to perform ceremony in your name anymore.
My eyes will only water, no streams fall down my face.
The earth you walk on now is scorched, by women who no longer see your face any time they close their eyes. You are Moses in a desert with no followers, just an endless mirage: a girl who will never love you beckons you further and further. And I am sure you are thirsty.
Then, call out my blasphemy, I swear I won't hear your accusations over the litany of curses muttered along with your name.
I am Judas, I am Brutus, in the last circle of hell, for I am betrayer of the only religion that ever made me feel whole.
But I couldn't spend another prayer on my knees.

We avoid each other’s eyes in a convenience store and you leave first. You’ve always been
 a step ahead of me; on two different pages of the same book but now the distance has become 
glaringly clear. I step outside in a rush to catch a glimpse of you and it seems futile because all 
 the other times you’ve just left first. But you’re waiting there in your white car and I try my best
 not to look at you and I don’t. And I pretend I can feel your eyes on my back. And maybe, just 
maybe, they are there but it doesn’t make a difference now. I wish you’d look at me, rather than
 through me.

I say your name like a prayer. It protects me from conversations that I can’t bear to hear, to rehash with myself or others. I can’t write it without unloading reverence into syllables and letters. I praise vowels for the ease they provide to your name and abhor them in the same breath. It is far too easy to let it slip off my tongue, an eternal mantra. I have no control over words that spill past my lips.
           I’m condemned to a phrase for the rest of my life. And the only complaint I have is that I wish you had a prettier name. Or maybe one less biblical. Sanctimonious. Transcendent. It keeps lifting me up and pulling down, down to where I’m forced to gaze upon it as a savior. Pleading to get me out a world where your name doesn’t mean everything. I can’t bear to be somewhere your aphorisms aren’t holy. Take me Home, where your words are ambrosia. The only food I will ever need.

i was so [angry, jealous, d e v a s t e d]
when you choose her over me.
i couldn't stand to see the pleasant calm that
settled over the two of you.
you were quiet with her, your eyes held
soft looks, shorts glances. disbelief in your face
like you couldn't believe the prize you'd won.

and i guess i'm wrong again because the word is broken,
i was so [broken]

you wouldn't even breathe
in my direction when she was around
and i was always around, a victim and witness to unrequited love.

i wonder if she hurt you more than you hurt me because
she always thinking of how she couldn't
stand to be with you,
even one more time.

i watched the way she'd brighten whenever he smirked
and she never smiled with you, only at.
maybe i feel a little better about this whole mess
because her heart was breaking in two,
too.

it doesn't really matter because she had him
and you and him and you
and sometimes I don't think
there was any distinction in time.
maybe it was all blended together
but I know she knew the difference because
she loved him.
and didn't love you.

and those words are vindication enough and I know our love wasn't real because it feels good, these words feel good, you hurt feels good.

her hurt feels good too [just not as much]
she loved him and loved him
and he didn't love her back,
not with the soft kisses and that sun-kissed hair.
not even with the way she said his name,
kind of like how i say yours.

but now he does and
i always thought i was the odd line segment in this love rectangle because she loved him
and i loved you
and you loved her and nobody loved me.

but I guess we're both losers in this stupid ante highschool ******* because you could **** her brains out
and she'd still whisper his name
and when he ***** her i don't doubt for a minute
you've never crossed her mind
and I know so many stiff socks
on your bedroom floor are sponsored by images of her.

so it feels good. being less x feels good.

disclaimer: because I started writing about smoking cigarettes but it sounded a lot more like falling in love


i wish i could spit the taste off my tongue as i breathe in,
but it lays stale and heavy in my mouth.
your hand grasps my shoulder, body leaned forward
your lips wrapped around a cigarette and i wonder:
does your mouth taste like my mine?

the smell will never leave this house.
you hold me close on a couch,
breathing air into my smoke.
your hands fumble, drop a torch on an already abandoned floor
and run your fingers through my hair.
i don't mind the smell later, it follows me for days.
for you, it takes three washes
for me to be erased.

my arm barely feels the pain as you flick
your last cigarette at me. the ember fades
into the snow as you walk away.
i've barely finished mine and
for some reason, in the dark
the tension in my lungs
never lets up.


i'm laying in an empty bathtub, fully clothed and
i can't stop yelling out about how much i love:
"i need a cigarette! can I smoke in here? please can I? please."
i can't
and
i grasp the sides of porcelain, weeping for linoleum,
trying to get outside, closer to you
because my mouth tastes like nothing and if
i could get the taste back, maybe i could get the feeling of
you back into my mouth and hands and

when i go outside, no one has a lighter
and i remember you always lit mine.

My successful cousins' vessels have been gentrified

though they’ve always had blue eyes 

so maybe that’s what was bound to happen.

Their tawny skin tone could always be explained

by a well-placed tan or an out of the blue vacation.

The only thing that gives them away is their last names 

and their parents hid them behind their firsts. 

The language that should be as familiar to them as
worn down shoes
 is muddled,
diluted by misplaced vowels and consonants.
And I’m no hypocrite,
my tongue has trouble forming 
similar words
yet they’ve never sounded wrong in my mouth.

and there were days when your kisses left hot imprints on my skin, smoldering.
     i would shove my head under covers and hope to keep the glow effervescent, my fingers tracing the pieces of you left in me.

a deep sleep would try to pull me through soft linen, it whispering
      "chase dreams here and not while you're awake."

but a hum in ears and a missing dip in a mattress,

cloth pressing against my skin, wrapped around my ankles:
a reminder that you were still not there.

and now i still shove my head under covers, chasing a heat that envelops the places between my thighs and shuns my feet from frost-

yet,
I can never find the warmth that you'd provide.

i know, i know i'm a *******
i love the sting of your spit on my face

you open your mouth and let words fly.
open your throat any wider and i'll see your tonsils.

every moment, you can only ever be angry with me,
maybe in love the next.

but i envy you for it, the truth's never been mine
though I can't find honesty in the way you say
you've had enough of me.

you won't ever apologize, but I see "I'm sorry" in your eyes,
every time you open the door again

i guess i'm just in love with the way you say goodbye