34. My Cousin’s First Cigarette

My cousin’s first cigarette
is home in the hammock of
speak-flesh,
carmine pigments press
against rolled paper,
fighting to be seen –
before stolen,
kiss-flesh.
Never her double,
the helix unravels –
we are less of the same
with every
exhale –
ash falls below
her copy of cupid’s bow,
sewn from scraps of
nipple-flesh,
hardened by the harbour
when she dived in and I did not.
Never, ever, brave-lipped
when the smoke curls
around her.

We run down the street,
I take her hand and her
cigarette.

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Jaimie Lee is a Sydney-based writer and PhD student, working on Gadigal land. Her poems and fiction have appeared in The Rising Phoenix Review, Ghost City Review, and the UNSWeetenedLiterary Journal. If she could, she would spend all her time writing in sunlit kitchens surrounded by black cats. You can find her at @JaimieElizabethLee on Instagram.