Walks Along the Seine

She smoked cigarettes like minutes,

And we spent the summer

Being chased by days

That lengthened like shadows.

She smoked cigarettes,

And the ever-thickening smoke

Dissolved lovingly into the fabric

Of the Original Distance between us.

She smoked

Violently, and we burned in the frenzied heat and

In the lush green fertility of Novelty; until one day

She smoked herself away.

She left behind

a solitary cup of thickhotsweet chai,

Infused with ginger;

And soon the memories of her

Hazel eyes and bouncing humour and

the delicate warmth of her tooslender wrists and

Her armour and her monsters and

Her affected joy, all

Shall fade into a beige nothingness:

Like a lover

Or a dream.