On the porch among the dead 

leaves I haven’t swept, the morning 

after our third date, I ask

you not to smoke. The smell—

a phantom mother 

closing the bar room in the hours between 

twilight and dawn, cigarettes 

soaked with stale beer snaking 

into my dreams when she quietly 

twists the key to shuffle

the deadbolt, re-secure the chain.

So, it's not the smell I mind.

But I’m house-sitting. Before 

they left, the owners asked me

not to smoke. Having never met 

you, did they sense nonetheless 

your arrival? They will retrieve the crushed butts 

from the flowerpots, their toddler to wonder

if something new is meant to grow, 

if they are allowed to build 

their garden in nicotine. You save 

your response for the space 

between inhale and exhale

You always do as you’re told? 

Your breath a cloud of ice specters 

and I am again a child, 

where fog silvers the river beside my house, and I

think it is smoke capping closely the water 

and only the water, a cloud valley carved

in the river basin. Could we follow, follow 

currents of smoke north through tributaries 

branching to the source: a place 

of unseen fire. Fire, the element missing

from our river. We had hurricane 

winds, post-flood clay mud 

like a second skin, and of course 

we had the water. Before I explain 

I know you’ll wait for another pause 

between breaths to shrug and talk

about the one-in-a-million chance of a spark

igniting browned leaves and blackening

vinyl siding—an imitation of wood—

but I explain anyway. To my surprise

you retrieve a glass 

bottle from the bin and stow the spent

cigarette within. It rattles

like a parchment scroll, an inscription

I want to read but can’t, instructions

to blossom curling smoke remnants 

into a stormy stratus sailship.

In the one year I remember a fire,

the smoke didn’t hug the river 

but billowed straight up, not silver, but abyssal

black. A piano repair business on the edge

of town. Barn burning. Lacquer 

coming to blaze. I couldn’t have seen 

the orange that night 

through the streetlamp glow: the horizon

was always indistinct, choking 

stars, and I had already gone 

to bed so I didn’t know,

didn’t know to look. 

The next morning 

she showed me the photos:

frames scorched. Strings slagged. This 

when the newspaper still printed

the front page in color. I could see clearly

engraved letters on the metal 

but couldn’t read their inscription. 

An antique guitar collection claimed

by the fire, too, mentioned in the closing

paragraph, but no pictures— 

what would have been left to show? 

How to distinguish one charred wood from another? 

She had quit by then,

smoking I mean, 

but was always looking to it 

as a scapegoat, and rightfully 

so, perhaps sensing the tar 

that would slowly claim her lungs

and eventually her, and she blamed the blaze 

on a still-lit cigarette thoughtlessly tossed 

aside, not knowing if the owners smoked,

not caring.