drowning

Concrete porch slab dimly lit by moth-brown bare bulb
only two days from going out.
Dark, quiet creatures with blurred faces

crowded and slumping into those
awful plasticky green lawn chairs,
somber soot streaks on the sidewalk stone

beneath and around them.
The broken flower pot in the middle calls out to better days of
blooming life in the face of the dead, poison stalks that

now litter its sandy soil.
No one speaks, and the relative silence,
unbroken save for the subtle scuff of a shoe or a low cough,

rests on you like the ocean of soft white smoke in the air,
oppressive, under which you nearly feel like drowning.

You don’t know why you’re here.

Maybe it’s something about the way
the tiny glowing orange beacon at the end of your lips
reminds you of some other, kinder warmth.

Maybe it’s in the pale toxic infestation that
worms its way into your lungs and settles there
an unpleasant tenant you can’t bring yourself to kick out.

Maybe it’s the silent camaraderie
between you and these other shadowed beings
indulging in this foul distance and numbness.

But you never really felt like you belonged with them.
The noxious puffs of pollution, of exhaust, of exhaustion
have never left you crawling back for more of this.

They’ve only left you drifting back
from that brief and acrid anesthesia

wondering if you’ve ever really felt alive.