Revisionist Poetry – Life of a Smoke, v.3

I was born in a pocket of night — a small, safe dark
that felt like forever. Movement told me I existed:
warm, resistant matter folded close on every side.

Then a sudden white light found me. Fingers, large and soft,
closed too firmly; I slid between two warm plains that shut like petals.

A spark cracked the air — a white star that leapt and touched.
Heat opened along my length; I tasted fire. Breath drew through me, a river.
Energy rose like tide and my skin — an ember-world — began to burn.

Pain braided with motion when the next suction came; the vacuum stole my shape.
When the drag ceased, relief fluttered like a thin wing. I grew small as smoke.
A buoyant lightness claimed me; my senses thinned to memory.

Everything went black in a new way: not the safe dark but absence.
I did not feel touch; I only felt the loss of touch.
If I could choose, I would fold back into that tight dark —
where to exist was to be sensed, not to hurt.
(Exhale — and I am ash and wind.)