Death by Smoke

I always would've rather lived in a room sweating with delirium
And drown in its lustrous perfume
Crack apart the alveoli in my lungs
Just to taste a gust of doom
And mother was the one who taught me this
To exist amongst the fog and the smoke
For it is better for an ash smudged man to live with the soot
Than to try to live in the pure air and choke
So it was no wonder when my mother
Slipped between the vapor and the cup
That I rolled her ashes into a joint
And lit my mother up.

-anna sluder 

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