Delilah’s silent look

is as bitter as a headache,

and as silent as the engine

of a 1953 Cadillac Coupe.

 

Her slender hands

dig down the depths of that

Mulberry satchel,

and once her cigar box lies unfastened, she quakes no more—

Delilah is frantic no more.

 

She now gazes at me through brittle eyelashes,

and nicotine-stained nails, her fingers like

fetters of frost wrapped around her

fat and branded addiction.

 

And with every drag she takes

I grow more aware that

Delilah obeys the law that she set herself long ago.

 

With a nostril-flare

smoke veils her face

and seeps deep within her hair in a mingle of white.

It burns my eyes.

                                                                                   inspired after “The Bell Jar” by Sylvia Plath