Dream Cigarette

Not the ritual post-coital, languorously passed from hand to hand,
smoke sucked further down than orgasm’s launch-pad: that’s not the one
comes back in dreams. No, I’m doing something ordinary, some daily task
so boring I’ve no idea what it is, and you’re there with me: it’s as I said,
a dream. We do this thing, we talk, we pass the time companionably
or not, depending if we argue, but the closeness never goes. That’s when
I realise I’m smoking, cigarette in hand as normal as the punctuation mark
it often was, marking conversation stresses with a jab. Still in the dream
I know that this is wrong, recall, in parallel with whatever task we’re doing,
that evening forty years ago when as usual I offered you my Senior Service
and you, who always carried Player’s Navy Cut, said "No, let’s give up now."
Asleep, I feel a twist of longing. Awake, I’m made aware it must have been
a real addiction. But then of course, in dreams I only ever smoke with you.

Lyn Moir

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