This Poem is Not....(May 2006)

This Poem is Not an Anti-Smoking Ad




“…just take one puff.” Spencer entices me
mostly because she seems to mimic my first love, smoke spirals
whispering silent secrets to the air around her, not that she
is even a fuzzy mirror image of Denise; just the lithe cigarette, its burning face
glaring at me the limp ashes collecting in a pile on her thigh
are all resurfacing a memory:

I am sixteen, hair pulled back in one soft afro-puff, jeans fraying
at the ends, I am the picture of practiced nonchalance
teenage angst and ambiguity. She is my dream
or nightmare—at this point I haven’t decided
which—dark honey hair perpetually
in her eyes, six months my elder, an eternity

those were her words of wisdom, slouching
against the blue frame of the bathroom stall,
paint flakes caught in mid-wave; the school was in transition, transforming
“…just take one puff.” I was too static for this metamorphosis, swallowed
too many propaganda pills, could feel my lungs blackening
by just standing there letting her invitation hang
pregnant in the stagnant air

“No, I can’t.” I whispered, mad at myself, lacking
the need for peer approval, too involved
in sustaining the stature of self I’d created, too obedient

Now as Spencer’s eyes hold mine, daring me to say: no
she is really a figment of my regret; I am finally in transition, transforming

“No.” I sigh, because she is not who I want her to be, not
a three-year-late reflection, just another patron lost
in the fog of the twenty-four hour smoking section.