shades of my favourite combination of
blues and greens and red and yellow
smooth like the slither of smoke
from the space between my lips
when I breathe in a cloud of
grey, dull smoke and fill myself up with cancer,
and exhale slowly, letting out all
the darkness like it's so easy.

Oh
how wonderful it would be
to take a deep breath full of pain and everything
that could possibly harm me,
only to have it synthesized and converted
to something so beautiful and pleasant
for everyone to love, including me.

But that can't happen.
Beautiful things like that don't happen to anyone
and
I'm not that special anyway.

**-AA