It’s the thought of your cigarette smoke.
Which cracks through the gaps in your teeth,
and into the hollows of your lips -
becoming so coarse because they are soft.

Clouds of your grey
pollute my eyes.
And you hide behind it until
it has threaded through my every pore
and into my tongue as I swallow into my gut.
I savour as if it was you that I inhaled.

I drown in that somber ocean
of your lighter in the side pocket of your trench,
and the packet which you dig from out your jeans.

As you breath
smoke flows into my ear - pollutes them
With late nights you spend alone.
A half dry pen on tea stained paperd notebooks
that are buried under paperclips and mangled headphones.
The sound as you force, pelting creased paper into the fire.
and tears which drip out onto your sweater.
and echoes of dying guitar strings
that can no longer bare the abuse you show them these nights
when the words and notes won’t kiss.like you want them to.

As it drips down through my gut
I taste the rasp smell of your cologne in the morning
after the rain wastes it off in the morning.
Along with the taste of salt that you drench every word in.

The smoke evaporates from my view.
I stare at your bones glowing under an orange street light..
Your eyes hollow,
eaten up by the shadows and I wonder
if you are in front of me.

Or if I only recognised the familiar grey clouds
- that once hid my blue sky.