Smoke

Published: November 15, 2022

When that cigarette smoke,

Tours through your windpipe,

Does it read your story, your soul, your mind?

If I inhaled it, that miasma of poisonous healing,

Do I know you better?

Even a little bit?

And then,

When I do it over and over,

A million times,

Could we, come closer?

The effluvium that kills the cat

And sometimes a man,

Could it

Take my life away?

So that, I could know

You were dead,

With black lungs, and innocent heart

Numb against the world’s evil façade

And we would be the same.

Then I wonder again,

If this smoke, blowing from a bong, changes your mind,

Do different bodies react to your release differently?

Like mutations against a virus,

Radiations for a superhuman fighter,

Or medicine for gout?

Cause then,

I too,

Must have been,

Presumably,

Dead inside.

Waiting for you to come along.

AVANI JAIN