Cigarette Break

In the haze of cigarette smoke, she finds love
and passion and fear and hope.
A whiff of

Sanity,
a moment so lucid

that night lit by one fading ember
blinds the stars or the flashing
billboards across the street

She puffs for redemption
with sight so clear
that the wafting smoke

is a gray whirl and
a spiraling vision and
a cloud of possibilities

where, finally, finally
life awakes in that single flicker
between the last puff
and the search for
a crystalline ashtray