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when she kissed me, the taste of ashes
invaded the cavern of my mouth and rested, heavy
against the seabed of my lungs. i heard the shipwrecked sailors there
cry out,
angry they had been disturbed
without consent.
my mouth did not ask for an invader, my tongue
bit itself trying to scream protest but was silenced
by the smog on her breath.

i don't smoke,
but if i did i'd say she was the best packet of cigarettes
you could buy. problem is,
we poets make so many metaphors out of smoking we forget smoking
kills. it burns. it makes your windpipe
fold in on itself like the broken limbs of a
dead, blackened oak. it makes you feel good and
silences
the protest.

my protest was still there when she kissed me,
when she touched me and
i wish
i'd said something then
instead of living with a layer of coal dust on my skin
that's invisible to the rest of humanity.
i wish i could clean it,
set fire to it, burn it off but you can't set a pile
of ashes ablaze;

i was the fossil fuel and she was
a three in one offer - fire,
oil refinery and big business in one. she burned me,
made me suit her purposes and sold me out
for her own gain. i was the fossil fuel;
now i'm global warming, the aftermath -

there is acid in my eyes and an extinct
muscle in my chest. i should have said something,
should have let the ghosts from the shipwrecks climb my windpipe
and demand
who was walking on their graves. should have let my tongue
scream for help,

but there was something
in the air that night
and it choked my lungs with saltwater
so i couldn't say
'No.'

i should have said 'No.'