Cigarette

You are like a cigarette.

You looked so beautiful in someone elses hands

on their lips.

I had never tasted anything like you,

and you tingled on my tounge.

The taste of mint and ash.

But then you burned me. You burned my fingers and my throat and my shoulders and thighs and it hurt, but the pain stopped and I was back to draging you between my teeth again.

And then, when it hurt too much to keep going,

when the scars stopped fading and cough started and the smoke stopped smelling like burned roses and peppermint and started smelling the way skin does when the fire kisses become too intense.

Then, I realized you were poisoning my lungs.

Then, I felt you staining my fingers with your smell, the smell of blackness.

I loved the fire inside you, the one you hid in layers and layers of ash.

I tried to protect it, to nurture it, but then I realized

in trying to keep you alive

all I was doing

was letting you burn me.