Any Place that isn’t Here
(with its crusted vinyl seats, slowly creeping mold mellowed by smoke)

The way smoke curls
off a half-finished cigarette,
rising a little too fast,
just a little too thin
to be beautiful,
that’s me.

The wind is turning colder now, i can feel it in my cheeks. My feet are still happy slapping the pavement as i skate home but something tells me before long i’ll be staying longer at work: smoking, having a pint, dreading that sudden bite when the door swings shut at 4:30 on a January morning, but for now i am a king and the men but my squires, every woman mine to have or cast off with the common disregard of royalty. Well, maybe not dominion over man and woman, but over all his lord(’)s creatures roaming the earth, or at least certainly those i feed. Complete control now, and drunk i have a remarkably spider like balance; weaving to avoid taxis, ollieing sewers and potholes, manueling medians, careening out of control into street lamps and wretched packs of roving international students (mostly female), apologizing anonymously before skating off as fast as i can. The laughter subsides and an elegant figure catches my eyes, a silhouette in a city of shadows, her hair is so slick it shone there for an instant, as i look away i see her turn and her face sticks on the corner of prince arthur and clark standing: smoking, staring straight at the void unflinching,
i will see her again.

The swirls in a cup of coffee,
and the twists in a remembrance of smoke,
curling a little too fast off a cigarette,
to be beautiful,
that’s me.

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Memory is tricky. i'd swear i'd seen her before i knew her, before, but now, fiction keeps writing into my life, i will imagine it as if i've always loved svet eventually, i suppose. Following a moment into a past that no longer exists is useless anyway.