do you take my obsession for romance i’m merely the cigarette you light with friends in the shadows of ignition a shared lighter— a breath half stolen, half shared confessions dancing at your lips i wait for you to slip i reflect your hiding spots— pristine, make you cough them out— in bouts i’m the cig held undemocratically between your phalanges, the stub you pass to a lover— without consent i surpass your dermis, settle into fat, read its history your bones-half floating— guide nothing i, the smoke, inhabit your cavities until you expel me in a nauseated exorcism i am the stub you grind beneath your heel forgotten in your hands licking your wrist i leave gothic kisses on your lungs: hardly there, hardly me i— the cigarette you become, briefly burning