Unsmoked

I hate the smell of windows closed
my mother keeps her cigarettes in my bedroom
beside the clock work angel
and a cardboard magazine stand
still wearing its Cable Ties label

No open-door warnings
or crudely erected alarm system
unlike the time I let a homeless guy
sleep in the spare room

He never came a’knocking on my door
never tested the door handle
and set the pile of banging, clanging things
across the floor and into my dreams

I hate the smell of windows closed
my mother keeps her cigarettes in my bedroom
wanders through the house to violate my personal space
leaving in a trail of not-yet-smoked nicotine in her wake
sometimes at five in the morning


I set fire to the fence
behind the outdoor brickwork
a grave for post-smoked cigarette butts
and tar lining my already black-smothered lungs
running to the laundry for a bucket full of water
hoping no one will move those bricks real soon
and see the charred flesh of the wood
that didn’t die all the way up

I hate the smell of windows closed
the rain came too late for the cigarette-smoked fence
a reminder of setting smoke bombs off outside
among the flammable leaves that fall from the guttering
like a plague of locusts dying in sun

Better still, than the time I set fire to my hair
or watched an over full ashtray combust
beneath a faulty smoke detection system

Better still, than the fading reminders of ash
caressing places it shouldn’t
with a red cherry of contained flamed
scarring and marring the kind of skin
that goes tomato in the sun

I hate the smell of windows closed
it’s been one week since I shook down a packet
to find the cancer stick inside

And my mother still keeps her cigarettes in my bedroom
beside the clock work angel
and a cardboard magazine stand
that’s starting to smell unsmoked
and just a little bit smokeable

© Indie Adams 2013