that night we lit up on her roof and watched the smoke dance in the vibrant black sky. her eyes are blending into the pure absence of light and i’m hopelessly lost. there’s an ash resting on her pale hair and i keep thinking i want to blow it away but i can’t move or she might disappear. her small calloused hands are waving a flame too close to my face but i can’t leave those two spots of endless, endlessly infinite, swirling darkness and i feel my cheeks singe. my skin is bubbling and melting and she’s catching the drops in the curve of her left palm. my muscles have still forgotten how to stretch. my limbs are carved from ice but my face, my face is burning and the tongue of her lighter is lapping at my eyelashes. my forgotten cigarette is burned to the filter and i let the glowing tip fall to my thigh. i’ve torn my eyes away but they bleed because in those moments we had fused together. i’m fixed on her mouth now, and it’s the face of my sister, no, it’s the lips of my kindergarten teacher on the day she whispered that her cancer was consuming her and never she never came back, but no, her features are sliding and it’s her again. it was always her. it was her face all along but i’ve flinched and she’s a stain on the ground.