Two Doves and a Lighter

We met at a bar in Birmingham on a night

When booze baptized you

And the world lost its shape:

New names

        New existence

                 New world

There’s a world in every bottle of beer

And you had twelve bottles before my arrival.

Twelve worlds in one head is death in disguise.

Satan’s kingdom has no throne for drunken martyrs.

You extended your hand

And said your name, Burner, or

Something that sounded like the name of a cigarette:

High deaths

         Low deaths

                  High births

                           Low births

Those words escaped your lips like your cigarette smokes

As what your name meant at that moment;

You were birth and death.

You were everywhere, but nowhere.

I smiled, nodded, but didn’t say my name

Nor shake hands with you.

My eyes were two doves, you said.

I nodded again and adjusted my bra.

You said my breasts were doves too.

The fourteenth stick exhausted your lighter’s gas

And I thought your cigarettes, lungs and liver

Would find some rest;

I blinked twice and smokes from the fifteenth

Stick left your lips in leaps and circles.

You were a lighter.

You are still a lighter.

No lighter can light two doves in flight.

© Echezonachukwu Nduka 2015 

(Image source: www.desibucket.com)