Once she handed me
her just-lit cigarette
so she could do
some backyard task.
I was maybe ten
and all my life so far
that totem of the forbidden
blazed all around me
in the mouths of adults.
Smoke clung to my clothes,
gathered on long car rides,
every ash tray overflowing
and the crushed butts,
their foam filters
lipstick smeared,
the softly crumbling ash,
its variations on a theme of gray,
stirred in me a mingled
fascination and revulsion
so even though this once
I was not just permitted but bidden
to touch one, to let its red eye
burn toward my fingertips,
it seemed a breathing thing
and I held it at arm’s length
upright like a torch
so far from my lips
I couldn’t, even for
the smallest of seconds,
be tempted.