Let me breathe in your exhaled cigerette smoke

Let me breathe in your exhaled cigerette smoke

girl with intrinsic understanding of form

let me draw those particles that have been close to your mystery

into my chest cavity and hold them there for as long as breath allows

i have photographed swirling patterns left by your chance encounters

and photoshopped them into sky-sweeping sunset clouds

you are symbolic

my mind has copyrighted you coca-cola red

and is marketing you to myself

substituting memories of you for a metaphor

as far-reaching as the freestate sky

your warm but distant subconscious south african persona

has become my synecdoche for womanliness

i wish i could google translate this into Afrikaans

and then videotape a spanish translator

communicating it in sign-language

and then sit

rewatching it on replay

thinking of how you moved your shoulders to eighties music in your car

and how it felt when you first touched my arm