I should have kissed you before you ****** on your smoke,
Before the fluorescent elevator lights illuminated the flaws
That danced and drifted along your skin.
The thick smoke mingled with your shadow,
A shadow of a man; no face, only a cigarette.
You breathed in smoke, but your lips were positioned for a kiss.

I don’t look like the other girls, the ones you used to kiss.
I can still picture your eyes, reddened by smoke,
And your lips as ashy as your cigarette.
And I hoped you, too, could forgive my flaws.
Like how my body casts too wide of a shadow,
And the sallowness of my ordinary skin.

Things that really shouldn’t remind me of your skin,
like old leather books with burnt paper that I bet taste like your kiss.
Such books I read in the shadow,
And hide, like the way you hid behind your smoke.
Because, like the way I love a bad book and its flaws,
I could love you and your cigarette.

I’ve held your hand, the one that holds your cigarette,
And I felt the sandpaper of your skin.
I smelt the airy cologne you use to cover the flaws.
It smelled light; you used just a kiss.
Now, I smell only smoke,
And the memory of your touch is a shadow.

In the hospital you were no longer a shadow,
But a body, surrounded by walls as white as your cigarettes.
Your voice cracked from the smoke,
While needles pulsed life into your skin.
Your lips were cracked with only blood to kiss.  
I saw you naked, and I saw your flaws.

Your favorite vice was your fatal flaw,
And the black fire of death became your shadow.
It followed you around, and it saw our first kiss,
Which was our last, because you chose your cigarette.
So a charcoaled monster brooded beneath your skin,
And your flesh succumbed to the white ghosts of smoke.

You died in smoke, from your flaws.
Your skin’s now dust, roaming with the shadows.
So I’ll smoke a cigarette, ‘cause it tastes just like your kiss.

I gild myself
in a sheet of
plastic, thick enough
so that no one
can see through…

Like an Easter egg shell;
I let them hollow out
the sloppy insides,
and paint my delicate skin.

I am no individual, I am
cultivated, harvested,
like the simple product I am.
Protect me: my flesh is delicate,
They’ll throw me away
at the first sight of a crack.

You consume my comrades,
But I am lucky—
I am now but a pretty little shell,
Painted pink and lush to conceal the sallowness
of my frail and immaculate skin.

Dawn slipped through the dusty blinds
of the chipping white condo
in the middle of the city
Soft, pale light
like the sallowness of her late son's cheeks
stuck in broken bars
to the far wall of the living room
The tiny yellow canary
in its iron prison
did not sing
A newspaper
with boldened headlines
lay open on the kitchen table
unread
The neighbours ignored the fake white lily
laying quitely on the cement,
cracked with cold,
the blue recycling bin
that had never been taken from the curb
the letter in the mailbox
that had never been read
The murmur of the news
floating from the television
that was always buzzing
filled her head with the static of
Nothingness
And her head, it seemed
was at the bottom of
Everything.
Slowly, the electric blue light
was lifted with white fingers
from the grey sky, through the blinds
She sighed heavily.
She hated watching television in the dark.