All dressed up in her mother’s cigarettes,
Which she has put on to impress the women on the sidewalk
Gossiping about someone’s dead husband.    
The way her knuckled fingers pinched the parched paper,
A string of smoke spreading in gray air,
Was inherited from her mother,
This along with her loneliness.
She never had a daughter to share it with;
A century’s tradition of absent intimacy and substitute truths ready
To cease when her lungs do
And not be missed.