cancerstick

(to the smokers in my life; veckesh, dyan, boey, and my grandfather who had died of it.)

-

a love poem is meant to be inhaled until your lungs blossom

as if you were taking a pull from a cigarette and exhaling an afterglow

because the perishers had lips tinged purple and lungs filled with words

and cancer wouldn't afflict those who didn't mind dying lest that was the reason they did.

remember kids, the best kind of love poem is to be breathed, like smoke

into the mouth of a lover who doesn't want you to die if he cannot follow suit.