(to the smokers in my life; veckesh, dyan, boey,
and my grandfather who had died of it.)

-

a love poem
is meant to be inhaled
until your lungs blossom

as if you were taking
a pull from a cigarette
and exhaling an afterglow

because the perishers
had lips tinged purple
and lungs filled with words

and cancer wouldn’t afflict
those who didn’t mind dying
lest that was the reason they did.

remember kids,
the best kind of love poem
is to be breathed, like smoke

into the mouth of a lover
who doesn’t want you to die
if he cannot follow suit.