You smoked a cigarette beside me
in the passenger seat of my car
in the dark, in the park one night

a lifetime ago.

You said: “We are born,
we do stuff
& then we die.

That’s all…

I wish I could, but
I just can’t make myself care
that much anymore…”

Spectral blue curls billowed out
from between the clumsy teeth inside
of your beautiful mouth,
& attempted to dance with those lengths
of false-coloured hair
you absently caressed.

You had an affinity for dysfunction,
you told me:

“I thrive among the broken things”

& I remember thinking
that it was fucked-up
how much I wished I was more fucked-up
than I already was.

I wanted too much:

I wanted your love.

Nothing else seemed important,
not the the future, not improvement,
not hope
or the vast tracts of free & unfettered time
that lay before us.

Eventually,
I drove you home.

Nothing much had happened
yet somehow it still felt significant.

After you had left me, as
I sat staring into the darkness,
the smell of smoke & your presence
lingered

& I was overcome
by sensation so intense,
that all that has followed since

feels like dull disappointment…