The markers on the highway are singing of night's white gleam.
I am two eyes lifting from the ivory smoke-out
Watching them like a trail of matches you dropped behind,
With your flat-footed nakedness, sauntering, swaggering,
While the dying flames are dreaming of cigarettes you'll never smoke,
While the hungry embers are reaching for that old
Tobacco breath that will never nest in my lungs again -
I don't think I love you anymore -
It is cancerous, bubbling,
It is ripping my flesh anew with fingers like charcoal paper,
Like roasting meat,
Like wood waiting passively for the fire's whispering touch.
You used to roll your own tobacco leaves.
I am crisp and frail, reaching for them,
Never sure of how the flaky touch would one day boil to ashes.
The mountain is tugging me, the tumbling mystery,
White markers ablaze and all;
Light is spilling from the sky, gray and misty
As if night and morning are distilling themselves
Into hovering phrases, half-*** excuses -
I'll fix it one day, I swear -
The fog is barely unsticking itself from the rocky peaks,
My jagged heart is watching as the dying haze begins to leave,
And I am wondering if that trail of cigarettes will lead me home.
December, 2015
