LAST MATCH

There goes my last match
It’s burning red and blue
There goes my last match
It will erase all traces of you

There goes your beautiful smile
from this last Polaroid
A flame from the lower right corner
Swallows you into the void

I watch the chemical fumes
Curling up in the air
I look at myself from the distance
In a cold glass stare
The highway that we traveled
Has ceased to stretch
And I’m burning all those memories of you
with my last match

I laced up all your things
And placed them in a shoebox
I stored it high in the attic above
But every night I was awoken
By the scratching sound of your love

Until one day my neighbor Mr. Charles Molaski
Said “Boy, you’re ruining all my midnight jazz”
He looked at me over the rim of his glasses and said
“Son, fix this mess”

I feel the caustic fumes
Curling up inside my chest
I let the darkness enfold me
And I pray to be blessed
Have mercy on the soul of this poor wretch
Who is trying to burn all his memories
With this last match

My reflection in the windshield wakes up in cold plastic sweat
Molaski turns towards me and says “Son, have a cigarette”
Hands me a book of matches from the Lost Soul Saloon
That’s where she and I had met
And where she said
“Here’s to a match made in heaven and a book of matches made in hell”
We and the matches ended up on the floor at her motel
Six years of hard living
Broke the spell
And they crushed my crush on her
But I still think about her
“Right now all we got left is this book of matches, don’t you see?
There is nobody left alive
But you and me
The first match is for you
The second one is for me
The third is for her goddamned memory”

I smile as the car is moving away from this mire
Hell, this burnt child does not dread the fire
My hand still trembles as I release the safety catch
And I feel precious like a fading flame

On my last match