I feel sick.
The taste of cigarettes
In ash-colored air -

The two are non-sequential.

Cigarettes taste like home.
The good part of home.

The part of home
That silences my mother’s mouth;
Preventing the vices of its tongue
And the stresses that cause them.

Over generation.
Over generation.

You are your mother.

A compilation of love
Forced by proved masculinity
In your open cavities.

And my father said...
Well -
He didn’t.

Words failed him,
As he failed us.

Silence and cigarettes.

Over generation.
Over generation.