Cigarette Halos

At midnight she hums in prayer,

A vibration which resonates outward, forward, and away

Pushed into the darkness,

Her breath will steal you stray

It is night and she has learned best to radiate in shadow

Her hair is the blonde of snow,

A foretelling of what we already know

She lives in the deep, and shuddering, agonizing cold

Tight and thin,

Pale and abandoned,

Her skin is a coffin which keeps on rattling,

The remains inside; hollowed and expanded,

Her body, a sunken city; a valley in every corner and mountain tip across each bone

Her eyes have died,

A very dark brown,

A hazard of being in reclusion,

She wants something more

Like the people beside her,

We choose to live in delusion and memories

With kisses and very little hope

An actress,

A singer,

A desire

I have applauded them for their success,

We are what we want to be,

We are what we were meant to be,

An actress,

A singer,

A desire

There is a hushed silence among the people that reside here,

Their stories go on untold

Behind doors the walls whisper

Secrets and lies,

We deceive

And then we die

She wants to live,

But most of all,

She wants to survive

Sometimes I see the monsters approach her,

The white light she stands under is a beacon

They are moths that cannot fly

Instead they crawl toward her,

A fractured light is what guides them,

Through a dirty, ugly, muddy path,

She is the gold at the hands of their wrath

She stands under it nonetheless,

Against the back wall of a rusted gas station,

Against the cool cover of dust which has layered on a street lamp

She has seen these things before

Behind doors and in alleys,

She has been here before

They like her dress, it is far too short for this cold

She stares at the ground below

She does not have a home,

Her glamour

Does not break.

She spares no blinks,

Oh, to get on with it,

Her time is precious,

She has been here all day,

Her presence smells of gasoline

She

Is

Flammable

With a cigarette between thinned, red lips she plays dangerous games

Greasy hair is pulled behind her in a short tail,

This is territory she knows.

She covers her head with a hood, and her hands shake

I do not know if she is cold,

or scared,

or high-

I nod, because we both understand why.

Clouds of smoke rise above her,

She drags them out like carbon dioxide,

They cling in the air,

Thick and tainted,

Pure- they are blinding,

Especially on these nights,

When the skies are black and white,

When our virtues are faint

Over here, there aren’t any stars,

But I have seen many angels

We share stories in cigarette halos,

I do not believe in God,

But these are the ones I can relate to

An actress,

A singer,

A desire

We smile, and continue on,

passing each other by.