As a little girl, my mother and father would drive around while smoking in the car, with the window rolled down, as I would roll up the ends of my sleeves clenching them towards my nose to be rid of the smell I have never liked.

I believed that when my parents would smoke around me, I was a smoker too. I had had the scent of a smoker too. But when I was with you, it was different.

That night, not caring how much I hated those sticks of paper as a child, I would watch you put it in your mouth and on your lips, inhaling it until you couldn't any further.  I silently sat in the backseat admiring how you would slowly inhale and exhale the toxic fumes it gave off.

That night, I went home.
I walked in through my back door.
I slid my shoes off and tiptoed toward my bedroom.
I passed my parents' room, witnessing them sound asleep next to each other, peacefully.
I took off my old grey sweatshirt and inhaled slowly, the smell of your secondhand smoke, and smiled.
Because it was yours.

I hated those sticks of paper full of toxic fumes.
I hated the smell of those sticks of paper full of toxic fumes.
Now, myself, I am one of those sticks of paper full of toxic fumes.
We both have touched your pink, chapped lips, got used, and are now thrown away.

In a time I never knew
Thankfully, outside of my own lifetime,
Your stories did not exist.

With sentences carved simply and economically
You weave ideas that engage us wholly
And open to us, image-by-image,
Memories of experiences that we have never had.
Nostalgia for other lives.

Or if you turn in another direction
You bring close around us,
The walls
The darkness
The night.
Suddenly, and with the echo of distant guns.

In our own worlds, the colours are a little
Less fragile. The smells a little less familiar.
Our interactions, the lives that end or begin,
With our every breath, a little less considered.

I do not know how your words
Bring somehow more than this
Wordless life that surrounds us,
But something in those pages,
Brings voices brighter than the sun which also rises.
More thoughtful than an old man upon the sea.
Neither the rain, nor the wind
Whispers so clearly.

I have no inspiration
so I walk down my street

but being suburbia, I
have no inspiration so
I drive to the end of town
where I can be alone except
for the occasional car
driving by,
and the occasional bird that
flies by
and perhaps the rabbit that
skips through the dry grass
waiting for spring to awaken it.

I sit next to a barbed wire fence
on a little rock
crouching, slightly uncomfortable, taking
in the moment.
Still no inspiration.

Slowly the dusty afternoon gives way
to a dusty sunset and
night eventually takes the land in its
purples and reds
and blues. And
I sit there,

shivering in the cold Colorado evening
and think.

Still no inspiration.