Smoke Signals

I once wrote: Home tastes like coffee creamer, and hell,

and the woman who read it over laughed and said: yes, that's it.

"Home for the holidays" strikes a cord, or a match,

and smells like cigarette smoke in the den.

Someone once told me they took the word "patio" off the SATs

because it catered to the wealthy.

I think of WASPs, and how that would outrage.

Poison the mood, something you should never do.

The "mood" of home is white,

everything covered in it and everything defined by it.

When you imagine me home for the holidays,

imagine a cigarette on one of those long holders

that I don't remember the name of

just the feeling

of being left in the dust of it, the smoke

swallowing me whole,

a baptism by fire all over again.