22 year old smokers breathe putrid sarcasm into my face
About how they'll die early when really
They don't know who they're talking to
Or understand how embers suffocate
Or what it feels like to not be able to recreate a flame
By pressing a button on a magic lighter
Or the knowledge that in real life
You can't just borrow someone else's match if yours goes out.
I honestly feel I've miscommunicated something to the universe.
I'm on thin ice with my body, like we had a fight and I never apologized.
It's infected me with a phantom lovesickness
Where that's all I can think of.
At work, at meals. In bed.
And I slip from myself when, without warning, it comes around.
Deeper, sicker.
I put so much love and attention into our relationship
Except I never thought it would turn toxic.
Those smokers know all along.
Well I never asked to be perpetually sick.
I never asked for a burnout in my pancreas but I
Thought that if I lived for my body I'd at least have
The two-thirds life expectancy about which the doctors told me
When I was twelve.
This is only the beginning, I think.
I know we're trying hard but with all the soul I invested--
With those countless inseparable hours--
Why impregnate me with such pain?
It's just--
I don't think I deserve this ghostly devil.
And there are others who beg for this shit.
