Up In Smoke

Your Mom makes you scrambled eggs

And toast with strawberry jam,

And feeds it to you in little bites,

While she tells you how high the tomato plants are,

And asks if you want fish tonight.

And so it goes,

As she runs from the truth that haunts your face.

Just for now, damn it all, she doesn't want to see it.

Looks the other way.

You are her baby.

At 52, you're bald as the day you were born,

And you are dying, right before her eyes.

I sit quietly by, watching her tender theatrics,

These moments only for her,

Too holy to interrupt.

After long, she scurries away to the kitchen,

Her voice all sing- song in the hall,

Trying to make the day ring

With impossible colors that can no longer be found.

And I am left to build my own impossible bridges.

Left to talk about inconsequential things,

To do my damndest to avoid the heavy stuff

That hangs in my chest

Like a thousand bags of sand.

Your hands tremble,

So I light up for you.

I hate the taste and the smell of smoke.

But for you, I gladly pose with the cig

Pinched in a peace sign.

Hold it to your lips, while you take a drag.

You teach me to how to blow smoke rings,

Tight circles that stretch and fade in the dusty light.

The privilege of this intimate moment

Is somehow stained by your unmasking.

Sullied by the truth this tenderness bares,

This physical decline that leaves dignity unspared.