smoulder

[Genesis]

"there is a loneliness in this world so great
that you can see it in the slow movement of
the hands of a clock"

i light a cigarette
i do so without thinking

i struggle to remember
what the first time felt like

the sensation of warmth against the back of my throat

the cinders stroking against my soft palate 

a celebration

whilst you suture the carvings of my skin and laugh at my crankiness

i can barely keep myself pieced together since the night before

i'm hooked, i'm constantly rolling forwards, restless, anxious

rolling my shoulders and letting you carry part of it makes no difference

the nerve in me won't find allay

i pick a second vice up, it quickly becomes a habit

i do it in an attempt to keep myself in check

...

i fail

but that's your fault, too

the first few times, ash had made me feel adverse

it brought me back to that place

landed in me the reminder of the blazing torches laying waste to my own

the phantom of sweat and the panic of pursuit

the euphoria of being forcefully cast off

it washes over against the counterface of my cupid's bow every time

...

maybe it's just another way to escape the present

maybe, i simply haven't caught up with myself yet, so i keep chasing back the threads for meaning

...

i want everything

i want everything from this place

everything from me

everything from you

yet time and time again, i'm brought back to my senses

pulled from the drone and shoved back into the stagnance

your table's full of ashes

i've lit ten and not taken a single drag from them

each finishes itself slower

at a pace so somnambulant one could mistake them for the relentless and lax ticking of your grandfather clock

your empty bathtub greets me in by my lonesome

the eleventh gone

thus the twelfth's ashen waste coats me in bareness

and i press my lips against the foot of the filter

i don't have the need to smoke anymore

do i?

maybe i hate you after all.

maybe i can't help but to.

this once, i come to once i take note of how the amber tail of the stick growing grey likens my lack of color

and i notice, from the acridness,---

...

that time

waits for no one

[Genesis]

today, I did it for you.
today, I did it for the countless ante meridiem hours of shade in which you got to hear me kick and twist about in our shared room.
I did it for the days you tried to reach out to me, be it in vain or desperation.
I did it for the complicity we found in none other during those days.

I cry at my lowest.
You irradiate everyone at yours.

today, I did it for the distance.
I did it for our hollowed-out hearts drifting elsewhere, be it ashore or deep
for there's space within, one we found filled with others' stares
today, I did it, Xenia.

I scream of the top of my lungs at my lowest.
You try and catch me anyway.

can I beg to remember it? the sound of your voice from the other side of our separators?
flush dangling freely at your head's cusp and waist? that sweet, chirpy, tense and unbearable melody?
the staccato in your character? the scarce and warm legato between intervals of your company?
today I do.

can I beg to remember it? The plea in her blue eyes? The azure of her mane?
My hand at her throat. The press of my nails?
My teeth sinking into her neck? And the flavor of royal blood leaving my buds, once I spit over what's left of her as she did you?
today I do.

today, I did it for you.

tomorrow, we'll see.

[Moloch]

in those precious last moments
in which I selfishly wait for my captors to decide
a voice calls out to me

and from the shade the forgotten son reminds me that speak we must
I light a cigarette aglow, with him in mind, whilst the shard glows at my neck
I don't reject death this time

for my mistake then was doing what you asked me to, to fight back
and perhaps, in accepting the invitation and rejecting everything
I achieve true stillness, and grow timeless

he nests me in his embrace, whilst the last embers of tobacco coincide with the dusting of my body
I yield not; I do it myself
and find within the shade that claims what's left of my soul...

the tower.

Should I let this vessel die?
Reform somewhere, someplace else?
Stay frozen in passing forevermore?

Am I not as you said I was, Alexei?
Death made person?