I'm a second hand smoker most nights.
I stare into the tip of the burning cigarette ****, waiting for the ash to fall and slowly float onto my tattered, yellow converse.
Each breath deeper than the next. His lips smothering the end until it reaches the filter.
Nothing left but a black and yellow nub. Its life, ****** dry.
With a flick of his finger, it falls to the ground in slow motion. Like we're in an old black and white film.
His cracked black doc martens crushing everything that was left of that tiny cigarette.
We leave, and it just lies there.
As if it were melted into the gravel.
Ripped to shreds and forgotten.
Huh.

You were the yellow brick road
& you thought it was grand.

All I saw were the people,
all the people walking all over you.

But you said "Look how shiny
I am, and how everybody loves
me, I'm golden like the sun, like gold,
Julia, like your hair."

So I stopped trying to make you
feel their footsteps, and I left.

I walked on the dirt alongside of you,
so that you knew I was always be there.

I walked on the ****** dirt
that nobody gave a thought to.
& it seemed strangely happy that way.