Belief Construct

The smell of dormant tobacco –

Unlit vice

The promise

Of tightly-curled streams of lingering blue-grey smoke

Dancing, twinkle-toed

Arabesque twirls on a filthy window sill

And in your veins



Staining the air

Ink-washed space, contorted fog

Your anchor

Floating

around your head,

Your escape,

Escaping the room



A stub of scorched ash teeters

Upon a paua-shell nebula

At rest; Extinguished,

Crumbling, dying – a sin completed –

The musings of a restless mind, pondering upon

Matters that do not pertain,

That cannot be uttered aloud; not in the mixed company

Of zier own head



Dry lips crack and crumble

Flesh to flesh, it pulls and releases

And protests the breath that passes against;

Bitter, and more bitter still

Fingers a-quiver

Zey see nothing else

But the space

Between

Dust





A thumbprint pressed onto leather

Burgundy silence,

Rich and forthcoming,

Plays against a sliver of grey

Where it will writhe, spin its course,

And rest

A journey not of miles,

But of minutes

Zier entire lifetime, in a breath

In the slow and haggard rise

And fall

Of zier chest.



Complete.