~ saving your life ~

Where I lay bare my saving grace and killing fields

You take a cigarette, long and thin, from the pack of Marlboro menthols
That I bought two days ago.
You hold it up between your fingers,
Jauntily, saluting
My cruel addiction to the little soldiers of death
Marching silently in the cold white carton.

You found my pack a few hours ago
Dropped accidentally by the pool
Where we spent a hazy island summer’s day burning
Our colors and skins
You picked up the miniature coffin
And looked inside
Seeing it was almost new
You pocketed the thing.

You look to me now with your big brown eyes
Hair blowing across your forehead in the strong
Ocean wind
You ask for a light with your mouth clamped shut
Against the light brown filter tip
And wait for me to kill you too

But see this cigarette?
This cigarette treats us differently.
We are not equal in its cold, cruel eyes.
I am an old friend of its.
I know every groove and fold it holds,
I know ever letter printed boldly on the carton’s back
Admonishing and daring me
But you know nothing.
You know nothing of the power it holds
Or the power it grants
You know absolutely nothing of the sentence you’re taking up
Or the life you will live
Victim to its strength
Culprit of your self-crime.
This cigarette treats you different
And this cigarette does not become you.

Give me the pack
And the death sentence you hold so tightly between your lips
For you, for you who found me among the lost and found
For you who returned me home
I would gladly bear the world
Or bite the proverbial bullet.
I would gladly inhale my lungs full of tar and nicotine
If it means saving a life.
If it means saving your life.

Author's Note

As truthful a poem as any I could write. Yes I smoke. Yes I love someone. Yes I stopped him from smoking.

Reviews

[mum]

very powerful words. you can tell in the way you wrote it that you did it out of love.