you and I would

find a spot

in the corners of

the bathroom floor

legs folded

into impossible positions

a demented form of comfort.

I still sit that way.

At seventeen,
I sang a song
“here I am not, seventeen
trying to beat your record
nothing but a teenage whore
lying on the bathroom floor
Mama, take me with you”
– a shrill cry

about how you weren’t

on the bathroom for

not with me

not at all anymore

and I smoked.

I still smoke.

Now,

blue and gold pack

the fan sucking in the smoke

while I sit

and breathe

and sing to you

so you may hear what I hear

taste the smoke from my cigarette

fit with your legs

entwined through mine

impossibly still.

We celebrate,

the way that you are alive
because I carry you
in my identical legs

and my identical lungs

and the way that I am alive

because I choose it to be so
because only those that stay dead
shall remember death.