SandScript 2023 [Digital Exclusive]

Inhale, Exhale
Maya Schenne
Smoke curls around your delicate ribs,
billowing forth with a ghostly exhale,
scorching embers crumble onto your collarbone,
staining the ivory with “How could you?”
I claw at your grave with bleeding fingertips,
wishing, weeping, withering away…
You sigh hollowly, toxic clouds filling your coffin.
It doesn’t bother you; not the stench of tar, nor my hateful wails.
You inhale again, but there are no lungs to demolish anymore,
no fragile flesh to taint with dark smudges.
Only those who you had embraced tenderly will come away stained, the
tarnished scars always a reminder.
And yet, there you lay, smoke seeping out from every crack and crevice,
pondering your newfound dilemma as I pound my fist against the ground.
You were only buried with a single cigarette
and now you must make it last.
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