She Lights Another Cigarette

She couldn’t fool me. 

Sitting on my porch with all of Bucktown in front of her, she tries to tell me that there are no more deep thoughts in her head. They’re all gone. She’s worried. She lights another cigarette. 

Sitting on my porch with the whole street in front of her, she says she doesn’t feel anything. She feels nothing; she knows how nothing feels. She’s worried. She lights another cigarette. 

 Sitting on my porch with the whole world in front of her, she tries to tell me that there are no more deep thoughts in her head. Here I am facing a brick wall. She has the whole world in front of her and I’m left with a wall. Should I believe her? She lights another cigarette. She’s not smoking these cigarettes. She’s lighting them to watch them burn: she keeps the fire going (the art of destroying things that destroy). She wanted to give up. She was worried. But she couldn’t fool me. She kept the fire going. 

Our words are cigarettes. We keep them going, we speak and talk // express and declare // state and proclaim to try to get every little microscopic thought that enters the orb that holds our brains and eyes, the orb which our ears straddle and whichever way our hair styles, to get what’s inside there, into the world, into the other orbs. That is why we write. Language is a living, breathing, smoldering thing. It is our duty to keep the fire burning. 

She stops looking worried. She lights another cigarette.