Is Mutable
smoke
I choke
the sounds of roots wrapping around my forearms
the sounds of gouging crescent shaped figures in my shoulders
smoke
there’s a sound in the woods
it’s echoing through heat
that sits on the leaves that sit on the deader leaves
that sit on dirt
made up of more dead leaves
all of it sits like a blanket of snow
everything is mutable everything is
smoke
we scrub it harder with water and layers and layers of bark
whistle through our finger tips
dispatch into the soil
but the dirtiness of smoke
sits on the air
the pita is burning
yiayia runs to open the oven
the oven sits under the roots of our great maple tree
the oven sits under the hollow trunk of a tree
a tree that should be dead but makes fresh leaves
leaves that leak smoke through their stomata
leaves that grow fingers and faces and cry like stars
with gargoyle faces
the pita is burning and the beehive in the hollow tree
is filled with gentle thuds
as all the bees fall down asleep
drowsy in the smoke
like we are drowsy in the heat
that blankets us and chokes us
the heat that is colored heat that is
smoke
I choke
I see it pouring out between the roots
smoke snaking through the withered leaves
smoke making the spiders fall off their webs
smoke making the birds that used to live here
hack and cough
little ghost birds
little ghost birds in my pockets that are dead that I buried
that I cry over
in their little shoe boxes filled with
smoke
I turn on my bed of moss to clutch the throat of smoke
I choke
trying to get out of the grasp of the smoke
he’s a figure
he’s a specter
he’s smoke
he looks like a tree with a solid trunk
and roots for legs that melt into the ground that become so soft
under the layers you can’t tell where they begin to merge with the
earth
smoke hold a gun to my head
a smoke-grey piece with the feeling of a circle not even piercing through
the heat that clouds my senses that takes away my sense of touch
every muscle gasping sweat glands pouring out smoke like stomata
until you choke
you fall back
wither softly through your roots sinking into the floor down like a good
like a cloud desolidifying like airy water splashing
like flower vases shattering
until I sit up with a jolt
and you disperse like
smoke
