by Ursula Carroll
Smoke comes from my eyes every day now
sometimes in the morning sometimes night
it sort of feels like a sneeze and an eyelash
and it doesn’t have a smell that I know of.
It melts my mascara off, my eyeliner too and
I bought tinted glasses, started wearing hats.
Easier than explaining the smoking glare.
I suppose this is much better than crying.
But I had to take down my smoke alarms,
I kept setting them off when I’d walk by.
One day, the cord of my heating pad sparked,
caught the curtain and burned the house down,
Me in it.
****
Ursula Carroll is a writer and translator in St. Louis. More of her work can be found at Ursula.rocks