can’t you see how much you want me?
how much you crave my essence?
open me up, open me right now.
caress me with your tongue.
ogle my perfectly shaped bars;
lick my wrapping.
are you dying yet?
tear me apart, take in my implausibly deep flavor;
eat me, eat me, eat me like you’ve never tasted me before.

Call, call, call.
She wills him to call.
Stares unblinkingly at the phone,
focusing the entirety of her concentration,
all her brain waves, like a battalion,
cleaned, loaded, rifles all ready and aimed at the little device.
Ten thousand fingers clutching ten thousand tiny triggers,
ready to shoot ten thousand guns
at the slightest vibration or ring.
Waiting.
Waiting.
Waiting.

She sits and types
Watching smoke unfurling tenderly
Translucent wisps
floating heavenward from her fingertips.
She stares in the mirror, but her face
is lost behind a thick cloud
That folds and unfolds and contracts upon itself
Until it is, too, lost in space.
She practices blowing smoke rings,
watches the perfect little O’s escape from her mouth
like the ghosts of donuts,
While slivers of ash
gray, silver, white, black
Fall like confetti to the floor.
Bit by bit, they pile up over each other,
carpeting the ground with fire’s dead remains,
Silent carcasses of Flame’s once bright and dancing youth.
Slowly, gradually,
they cover her feet,
Reach her legs, her chest, her neck;
Encase her frozen face,
mouth still petrified in a ring-shaped ‘O’.
Again and again
tendrils of flaking white ash flutter down,
Mount higher and higher;
Smother her flat eyes, her brows, the tips of her pixie-cut hair
until there is no sign of the girl,
until she is gone,
Buried alive in the fragile, collapsible graveyard
with all the corpses
of her own smoke.

Time is measured
in problem sets and exams
birthday parties and housewarming parties and frat parties
going out to eat with chattering friends,
anxiety in the wait for the week’s end,
finding the time for peace in ‘alone’
or calling our parents up on the phone.

Specific occurrences far from each other:
Weeks.

... or daily:
Watching each minute slide by,
Digits slipping one by one
Into ever-so-slightly increasing quantities.
Like a microscopic tortoise
on an infinitely stretching number line,
Moving steadily,
always so steadily,
toward the invisible finish line.
Why?

Climbing six flights of stairs
to smoke on the roof, alone.

Cold seeping through your white robe,
thawing ice soaking your feet,
bitter wind whipping your face.
Cursing as even the cigarettes
refuse to light.

Open space surrounding you,
you, so close to being swallowed
by that endless black chasm in the sky.

Feeling little and alone and afraid and lost.

Watching the tiny figures of the people
shuffling by beneath you,
each in his own little world,
preoccupied with his own little thoughts.
Each person a dusty book
hidden in library shelves never traversed
Touching, so close to those around them
yet impossible to open and read.

Remembering your own people--
boys and cuddling;
fleeting moments of joy
that fade after the sun rises.

Throwing out the stubs,
Putting yourself
your self
your self
back together.

Rejoining happy friends
with a sad pretend smile,
Dizzy from the smoke,
heart still cold,
but slowly
gradually
regaining warmth
and strength.