Bequeath

This pale face in my hands, eyes angry by
tears. A tea bag should do the trick. A cul-de-sac
of mortal paradise closing in on the headstone
before me. Lungs blister through these Marlboros,
an infection bad for my health. Above this lawn,
unkempt, routed by loss I plea insanity. Maker of this
woman, please entangle me in capillaries filled with
the secondary hue of her blood. Those frail arms had full
custody of the weight that was me.

Ashes fall with each tap, coercing me to muse over
the russet complexion, tattooed eyebrows, and lipstick-
creamed cheekbones as the free foreigner’s apparition, greets
me in nostalgia; I exhale the tattered snapshot of her sending me
off to tap the sublime heights of indispensable adolescence swinging
on a seat, after each puff of the addiction she unconsciously
bequeathed me.

Thursday mornings claim frostbite on broken granddaughters.
During coffee breaks, I inhale the inheriting factor of scratched vocals
as the tobacco smolders filtering out my screams on the other. My pre-lunch
prescription for coping is done, unsound. Internal aches pierced by
an elegy, walking beside the wafting remnants of her last breath, I am
forever spun out on this death’s lingering nicotine.