we made makeshift settlements in old, crumbling ruins
and we weren't homeless but we sure weren't home
so we sought out places as broken as we felt
with digital camera clicks and rough clearings of throat
(that hint of asbestos and ground-to-dust brickwork)
laying out soft blankets and forgetting they were too thin:
gravel digging into hunger-knobbled spines as we slipped under cosmic spells,
spying constellations in burnt out stars and speaking wax poetic
with slender fingers intertwined and your soft palm hissing softly as my callouses grated your skin

and when you told me you loved me, i really believed it
it was clear as the jewels that glittered on that midnight dressing gown the first half of the earth slipped on whenever the sun slid away to her lover's second side
obvious and inevitable and woman i loved you too
how impossible a thing it would be, to melt into each other's souls like wax on burning candles
without solidifying and finding a permanent fixture once the heat cooled off
through every wind and motion, all the weathers, where you'd go—there i'd be
but like candles, our wicks were time stamped and endangered
we faded out in a curl of dark smoke, and maybe that's when i turned to the nicotine