Oh My Mistress C

Fumes of the extinguished fire lingers filling the room with scents of wax and burnt wick.
The smoke, though invisible to me in the dark, reminds me of your thin figure, your fire.
Your sweet aroma of earth and leaf, tobacco leaves damp and smoldering, beckons me
and recalls your soothing sedimented richness through my blood, surging in my veins.
I had my first taste on the elementary school playground seduced by smoldering cool
you were when introduced to me by a school mate, someone you just met days before.
She wanted me to know you better, so we met by chance secreted on the very edges
near the woods and the hill, closest to the shady space of the field for the most privacy.

Since then, we have been friends, sometimes lovers, often thought bedfellows for life.
There were times when I had to let you go poison and pleasure someone else’s bed.
Many years went by when I merely longed for you, craved your touch, your taste…smell.
When I had my kids I didn’t want you around, denied that I ever knew you, needed you.
But my desire for you never left completely, and when I would see you around, I knew.
I would always love you, always wish you were back in my life, so comforting and calm.
Though, you come and go, drifting into my days after I have begged you to come back
then begged you to leave, give me my healthy peace, my independence, oh my mistress.

I cannot be who I yearn to be, full breath me, flexing into the wind and the drawing in air
not with you in my mind, my heart, my veins, my throat, my mouth, your scent reeking,
making my clothes, my fingers and my breath smell like you always wafting in before me.
You’re no good for me and I will never be free of longing for you, controlling you always.
Mistress C, I cannot commit to you, even with what you supply, stress release and repose,
and commit to the other side of me too, the one united with the rest of the respiring world.
For you are no good, kill me with your alluring touch of my fingers, mouth, face, and hair,
my mistress addiction who constricts me like a boa, my lungs, blood flow running freely.

Disease me not, be gone and beguile some other unsuspecting foolish follower of the flame!