Morning stretches its fingers
Across the smothered sky,
Scraping the silken blue fabric
To reveal threads of pink and orange.
The swollen clouds
Find their way through the mountains like a lost dance.

The smoke from my cigarette dances
Through my aching fingers
Like a gypsy toward the clouds.
It loses itself in the backdrop of the sky,
Bleeding into the orange
And pink fabric.

The birds find their place in the morning fabric
And the cigarette, dancing
It’s fiery orange
Butt, warms my icy fingers,
While the yawning sky
Stretches between the clouds.

The smoke stretches in my throat, clouding
The miserable fabric
Of my lungs. My eyes trace the wrinkled pattern of the sky,
Remembering some lost Navaho dance
And I feel fingers
Tearing at my insides, burning orange.

I wonder about the orange
Of their skin, if they saw the same clouds,
Those Navahos before me… The way their fingers
Sewed pelts and the very fabric
Of their homes, where they would dance
Praising the Gods of the sky.

The ashes of my cigarette float toward the sprawling sky
Painting the wind orange
And like a nomad they dance
Away. Another cloud
Puffs out of the shrinking white fabric
That teeters between my fingers.

The morning sky, with only the clouds
For company, cries orange tears through the fabric.
The cigarette dances toward the ground as it falls from my fingers.