Smoking is too Slow a Death
by @z-trista-davis
I’m driving past the school that I went back to for five, six, seven years straight—
The place that grew up around me like a dessert oasis— or Rapunzel’s tower.
I wonder if I should stop and put my hands on the old white bricks,
Like maybe touching the school will be like touching my childhood and it will heal my broken heart.
But I’m already past the turnoff going 45 miles an hour, so I turn my wandering eyes back to the road ahead.
And at the green light ahead, my unrequited love is riding a bicycle across the street one-handed and smoking a cigarette,
Wearing a shirt that says “please hit me with your car, so that I can just stop feeling”
But I swerve, and he slowly pedals on