Vanilla and Clove

I am smoking again

harsh cloves to make my throat raw, for want of a scream
all the color has been washed out of this apartment parking lot
until today seems more a memory than a Saturday.

I walk from nowhere, for nothing except
to feel the wind steal smoke and breath from my lungs.
there are leaves ripped and drying in forgotten corners,
piling higher, as if to wipe away the hard, hot edges
of summer. they crackle underfoot like forgotten words,
or the frost that will surely be here in a month

Last year, we sat in a place like this,
with the same keening wind and the same dying trees,
our voices intimate, our hearts guarded as we talked.
I was hoping to fix this or that, but saved nothing.
my words were scented with cheap vodka and my hair like French vanilla—
you always loved vanilla

I quit soon after you left, trying to convince myself
that I wasn’t at all who you thought I was
yet always knowing you saw me perfectly clearly.

it was what I loved about you.