smoke and sparrows and stars

by: stacy

you only talk when you smoke,
exhaling words into nicotine clouds
and toying wiht philosophy as you toy
with the cigarette between your chapped fingers.

ideas and thoughts spitting themselves from you lips,
like sparrows fleeting tree branches.
they could race the shooting stars above us
and match their pace with ease.

you only talk when you smoke,
at night, sitting cross-legged on
your concrete steps,
emptying your mind onto the pavement
as i bathe in your tobacco haze
beside you, breathing hesitantly.

but i'll risk lung cancer
a thousand breaths over,
just to hear you speak.