the slow art of breathing bitter

Worn Away Cigarettes

We're the yesterday girls—devouring the liquor-washed sun.

Our lungs swell in the putrid smoke

of crushed cigars on the dark edges.

They breathe the thick air, curling

in them—a stretched afterthought of epiphany.

The tendrils of bitter smoke eat us away;

We're tired of walking and stumbling into the thorny

bushes of blue flesh and crumbling sins—

and arising with bloodshot eyes and bleeding limbs.

The cigarette burns in the blue light; blood bubbles out of our mouths.

Our broken nails claw the beige walls around us, plaguing our

minds in thoughts dark as the rising sky.

The chemicals lace our bodies; we congregate in a blue carnival

of blasphemous psalms, wishing to hear noises behind the beige walls.

Yet, we crawl around broken glasses and dead cigarettes,

thrashing ourselves in toxic desires.

This asphalt silence burns us away.

Life wasn't meant to be like this—

dissipating in the corner of a room, dumped

in cobwebs and mold-stained dresses.

This weary afterthought and overstretched silence

are too much to bear holding onto the rusted hooks

in our plagued minds and stitched nightmares.

We're tired of dreaming of molten gold and crooked illusions.

Ruby glass fingertips trail along the purple cuts 

tattooed on our bleeding arms.

Our bones, now tainted by acid rain and alcohol,

used to sing of happy evenings under plastic umbrellas.

They wince in pain and roar in agony, combusting in whiplashes.

We burn away in stinging limbs and hollow souls—

muted by impending dreams around cigars and red wine.

Burns and stings damp our life; the chains tangled harder 

around our bodies: too fast yet too slow near death.

We're tired of our demons and scars.

Girls like us could never die in peace—

we're so tired of everything,

but mostly,

ourselves.

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A/N: This's inspired by a poem I read weeks ago. Let's tap the little button hoping that things will turn up soon.

©May 25, 2023. Sreeja Naskar.