Yesterday's Fire

When we met, you had long hair and you weren't a lesbian.
I couldn't imagine sitting in a living room watching Golden Girls
in my underwear, drinking tequila and blackening my lungs.
You tempted me with secrets when I disappeared to
fuck men from Texas before I realized this city is burning,
everyone smoldering in ashes of yesterday's fires.
Last winter, I forgot how the trees looked with grass carpets
Because we only knew fire and dirt and midnight sirens painting everything blue.
I don't remember the taste of innocence or the first feelings after it was gone, but
I remember the smile you held between breathes of nicotine and Turkish blend.
We weren't the ones abandoning, but those abandoned. Forgotten?
We play with ashes waiting, the only things left: memory and remnants, and
I keep repeating those phrases, letters -- words.
I didn't smoke before Brooklyn.