Forget what they say
the year started in March
when a girl offered you a cigarette
leaning against her blue beater.
The match was lit.
Still
you stayed.
Did you know fingers
can smell of cigarettes?
Fingers that point and pluck and love
perfumed with a past
no memory of you.
You’re not sure how it started.
It started when you arrived
it started when you wrote your name
(not your name)
in marker
on a blank white sheet
it started when you were mopping the rec room
and his doubts poured out
straight into the dirty water
and you washed the entire room with them.
(Did his doubts smell like tobacco?
You don’t remember.)
It’s easy to ignore smoke
to name it incense
fog
a dirty ghost from
a dirty past
rising from the rec room’s
dirty-water-washed walls.
It’s happening, they told you.
No, you said
and walked away.
(You cried on your drive to Ohio.
You never told anyone that.)
People tried to bury
their loneliness in you
like an armoire
they could hide their
secrets and shame
knowing they’d soon be smoke.
They expected you to be someone
when you were barely yourself.
Call me by your name
No.
Call me something else
let me be someone else
let me move to Ohio
and be synonymous
with the sound of rocks
sinking in stagnant water.
Farrow
(Only one person asked
what book it was from.
You never give more
than asked.)
Bonfires burning the night
all eyes on California
when really it was Ohio
going up in flames.
Scorched love.
Scorched earth.
I still don’t know
if love or anger
burns hotter.
People in Parks 