Trisha Kirby

A 2 A.M. Poem

You left two cigarettes at my house but two cigarettes is all it takes to start an addiction and it's an addiction I'll always hate but on you... it looked hella great. You wore the smoke like cologne and the smell was enough to make me choke and you apologized for it. You apologized but never quit and eventually I became used to it. I started to like the stench or maybe it was an acquired smell but when it finally became home, so did you. You were two a.m. cookies and 10 minute back rubs when work was wearing me down. You were slow dancing while breakfast was cooking and you were the sturdy arms that held me when my depression was more than I could handle and when your hands wiped away the tears that poured from my eyes, it was enough to break the camel's back. You were the feather that broke me. All of my walls collapsed. But when they collapsed it was a free-for-all barren wasteland full of arguments and thrown shoes all over the ground. My home now contained a stranger I had believed to be my lover. My home was a damaged one to begin with but when you left, depression and loneliness and rubble was all I had to call mine. Those cigarettes weren't mine. They were the memory of you and I never wanted to relive that memory again but without the butterflies you used to give me, my insides felt so empty. I struck up the lighter that I used to burn our bridges and lit up the stick of cancer you left and the first huff was like I was breathing in the lighter itself. The smoke burned my lungs and brought back the smell of you and by the time I lit number two, I realized I was addicted. Not to the taste of cigarettes, not to the toxins filling my lungs with every huff. I realized I was addicted to the smell of smoke and the taste of ash on your tongue but if smoking these cigarettes is the closest I can get to you, then I guess lung cancer doesn't seem so bad.