Drifting occurs whenever I do not respect the whole…
(The Pleasure of the Text, Barthes)
Often, I feel like
writing with the cigarette’s ash,
using the grey chalk
of its carbonate,
and calcium of my bones,
that it has eaten.
Does it turn you off
to think I love you less than
my selfish ashcraft?
When I think of you
I spend many hours smoking
to draw the constant,
the one unmoving
image of you, in a sea
of ringlets of smoke;
crescent moons of smoke,
or full moons that eclipse you
from my addiction,
of you and your eyes,
too opaque for a teller
of sad fairy tales.
Smoke waters my eyes,
refracting grains of your body,
your apparent depth,
your virtual honour,
the dandruff of my bald lungs,
our shared hypocrisy;
the shoes I polish
while whistling on a cigarette,
the face you adorn
for a non-smoker’s breath,
in an old mirror, crisscrossed
by sails of my smoke.
You romanticize
the subject of my addiction,
while I circle you
in all I exhale:
a poisonous rotten breath,
too white for suspicion.
Often, I feel like
wiping my lungs with the hands
of a child from your lap,
writing on its head
a clean surname of my past,
and teach it to write its own,
with the precision
with which your nails tore me part,
of fire that has burned
my wooden ego;
often, I feel like giving up,
often, I just let it pass.
