Our carpet with a hole in it, where you 
always caught your 
heel. Huge heeled 
party shoes, you were long-necked 
an ostrich, black-feathered to kill. 

Round burns ringworm  
the sofa where your cigarettes 
stabbed deliciously 
grey flowers of  
thread. 

A hand of frost cracked the window, 
lumpy at the joints. You stared at this 
puffing silent smoke screens of breath 
onto the arthritis of that morning. 

You shed the sheets 
like a snake its skin, your 
scales still left their 
patterned marks on my bed. Now 
when I wrap myself up at night 
your old blades, paper thin and invisible, 
cut into my skin. 

In the tree outside, gap-toothed branches 
swallowing the moon at night, you saw 
a marijuana joint lit 
by lightning. 

Now I burn 
into the bed, smelling my own smoke – 
your lightning ignited me, a whoosh of a joint struck 
in darkness and 
I disappear in the green smoke 
of your memory. 

 
  © 2000