Pipedream

Cover art by the author, "the blitz"

Smoke

It was four days after the colonoscopy

and his head was still swimming.

A word spoken into the air

with such weight and certainty

hit him straight in the forehead

as if it were the smoothest stone

from the riverbed.

Scratching palms on the porch.

pipe resting between chapped lips,

smoke spelling "fuck you" as it

floats into the air.

Rocking in a chair with three legs,

not four,

pulse quickening with the sound of every

bird and every mosquito.

When the streets keep swirling,

its tide pulling in and out,

the matter of the mind

seems too heavy to be attached.

Blinking in quick succession,

turning the sky into a stop motion

feature film,

clouds are chopped up

into individual, wispy fragments.

A residual gloom cloaking

news of a spreading death

"I didn't think I'd get that far,

He'll say as darkness consummates its passion.