I sit in the black leather chair
meditating
on the plume of smoke that rises
in the air,
riffling the pages of my life
as if it were a book of poems,
flipping through
past & future.

If I go back, back, back,
riding the plume of smoke,
I find I died
in childbirth in another life,
died by fire in the life before that,
died by water twice, or more.

I pick out days
& relive them
as if I were trying on dresses.

When the future beckons,
I follow,
riding another plume of smoke,
feeling the barrier
between skin & air
evaporate,
& my body disappear
like the myth it is.

My cheeks burn against the air,
flaming where two elements collide
& intermingle
becoming one.

Oh explosion at the body's edge!
I live on a ledge of time,
gazing
at the infinite.

© Erica Mann Jong

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