Waiting Room

I would light one and start the countdown from the

electric blue burst of gas. This is how brilliance begins

to live. I watch the smoke elope

from my mouth to be with the atmosphere.

*

This is my armor. I am gathering courage in this

gauze of smoke, a permissible vice I authorize,

not that of you to whom I sink or swim at the degree

you let the pendulum fall.

*

My mother never told me to stop, only told me

the waiting room has been crowded yet emptying

faster than ever of late because

cancer is not a question of if.

It is now a question of when, but I

am young and cancer becomes a thought

only after other thoughts are ironed

out by denial and time.

*

On such nights like this,

I divide my breaths, long seconds between each

other, afraid to see the threads of clouds

that exit, making their way to the entrance

of the waiting room, its queue beginning to shorten.