Love Poem: A Dying Cigarette
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Written by: Ruby Reid

A Dying Cigarette

Inside your mind desire starts to grow
Denies your guilt, and blossoms on a whim
Soon your guilty conscience starts to slow
And lazily obliged, you let it in

Creating both the cure and the demise,
You give in, lift it to your lips, and sigh,
Caring neither for the cost or body’s price,
The satisfaction leaves you feeling high

This is Us - a brief and lingering trail,
Of smoke, ascending high into the night,
Something born to flare and then to fail,
The dying of desires lonely light

Time consumes the greedy, burning flame,
Your craving wavers - you see this is bereft,
You had your fill, and pleasure becomes shame
This cigarette is killed, with a final hasty breath

This is all we are, now – you, I and “us.”
Forsaken, extinguished, and gathering dust.