I feel my hands this eve,

As they in the past

Have labored many loves.

Loves I thought,

At the time,

Could heal and mend me from all forms of captivity.

Captivity I fear,

And free is where I dream to be.

That dream that has pulled me in,

Time and time again-

But now, on only my two feet I stand,

Young mouths I nurture and bleed to feed,

With no love there anymore to take me in between.

I see the rippling change ,

And clarity of where healing truly lies.

It was never “him,”

But always me.

He that was there,

But I, only to take then and chew,

And spit out in the mouths of little babes.

Alas, now, I know this isn’t me.

Nor who I was ever meant to be.

This clarity that ruthlessly unfolds,

To show certain vision in my eye

And plunge me further to my destiny.

‘Tis now a reminder

Of day to day, I cling,

A symbol I drew of independence,

A plea of what I want so desperately.

I wished, but now I see,

Whilst inhaling this cigarette,

Of countless turns, this one that cannot

Be numbered from its many draws-

The hundreds of its multicolored nights.

Drawing in the cycles of its many men

And bringing only recolection of

Familiar suffering.

-To now, I see

The thing I must let go,

The dog’s tail of this chapter’s close.

These fingers shake as they tighten grasp

Of the cigarette that never was the lie,

But the lie I imbued upon the tip

Of its lightened end.

The red eye I spun a fiction,

Of a man that could fill my integrity.

But alas, I know,

And now I do let go.

This one thing that can free me

From my ultimate captivity-

The invigorating smoke I take

Was not a man, but a yearning for

A chance to see,

And break through to my infinite strength

I always wished to seek.