Cigarette snowflakes

Holy hell, I never thought I could view cigarettes in a different way. This is a whole new perspective. I love it, I wish it were longer! Amazing job capturing every moment!

This poem was awesome. It was short, yet sweet, and made me feel the feels. Maybe be more specific about the importance of the cigarette tho.

This poem is very good in this stage, but I question the last lines of both stanzas. I think your intention of bringing in the line of being in your partner's wind could really work as the last line, "I am a partner coughed out in your wind," or something. I think this poem is brimming with brilliant emotional images, and the reader doesn't necessarily need the proclamations of those last lines. I think having a concluding image in both stanzas as opposed to a nod to the actual emotion would be a more effective way to go. Regardless, I'm very much enjoying your poem. I think with a touch of editing, I will love your poem.

But you're not mine

My only friend, the burning ember in my hand

The cigarette I share with the wind.

Yet still, I see you there.

Wreathed in a grey-blue shawl...

Wow, I love this- Love the mood and love the flow. You paint a vivid picture with your words. How long have you been writing for, if you don't mind me asking?

An excellent narrative with some great imagery. As a friend of several smokers i'm very familiar with the lament of one who does not want to be 'saved' but find themselves, as you so elegantly put it,

buried in your worries

Your use of descriptive language creates a wonderful visual made of smoke, a person 'wreathed' in a 'shawl' of it. The very title creates a contrasted beauty of ash portrayed as snow, then continues into an effective metaphor describing an avalanche, in which that beautiful thing finds the power to be deadly in volume- a good message.

I particularly liked the line

Exhaling onto spider webs,

because to me, that exemplifies the awareness of danger. Spiderwebs are representative of an inescapable trap, and there is a displayed resentment in the following line based on the narrator's awareness of that. This leads me to one of my criticisms.

I read this poem 2 or 3 times before I realized that there is a perspective switch from the smoker to their partner between the two stanzas. While I think that's an awesome artistic approach, it isn't made abundantly clear which causes a bit of confusion in reading. I had to re-read that last line a few times because I kept thinking "did they mean my, or is it supposed to be your? is there something I'm missing?" That said, the second stanza bears a nearly spiteful tone once you become aware of that. I would encourage you to make that more obvious to the reader for a more distinct impact, because once it hit me, the stanza was much more significant.

Your comment at the end regarding how the person smelled caught me off-guard because i didn't get that indication at all, and it got me to thinking. You play very heavily to the visual aspect of smoking and create this wonderfully vivid aesthetic, but it doesn't really appeal to the other senses. Now obviously this isn't a necessity, but you could definitely cater to other sensory aspects if that was your intention, ie. what smells does it evoke, what tastes permeate the air, etc. Just some food for thought.

As far as sharing a cigarette with the wind, I think the name is actually very good as is, it has a good hook to it. I always like coming up with metaphors, this is one I came up with:

while wisps escape from 'tween your fingers
A gentle breeze steals a drag

I'm sure you could come up with something you like and implement it, imagery doesn't seem to be your weak point. Keep it up! Thanks for the excellent read.

I like the central concept here: of a person that feels cold (in the broadest sense) and is trying to use a cigarette to warm herself but it has the opposite effect (dropping snowflakes).

I am not sure that the narrator adds anything as written. I could see the relationship between someone who is trying to love a cigeratte addict being compelling, but it does not quite work here. I think the plea that it hinges on "Can't you see I just want you to be mine?" just is not punchy enough--it does not vividly convey the desire and despair that I imagine was the point. On a similar note, "buried in your worries" seems to me a bit too silly of a phrase (both sonically and in terms of the image) to have the required pathos.

I'm also torn on L2. I like the idea of the subject having smoked enough to cause an avalanche, but the phrasing with "peace of mind" is a tad awkward. While it draws a nice link between the metaphor of being cold and being worried (through the shared reaction of shivering), the stronger idea might have been to stick with the metaphor and say that she had created this avalanche for warmth. (Again a strength of the central metaphor: at a certain point being cold enough starts to feel like being very warm.)

I'm not sure how much I like the idea of a spider inhaling the second hand smoke. On the one hand, it's pretty funny and suggests the squalor the subject lives in, but on the other it does not contribute too much to the central metaphors or portrait of the subject.

Just for fun, because you asked for it.

I took one from his [/her] hand. It did burn for a moment.

He turned to the cloud-capped mountains

and shared a cigarette with the wind.

TLDR: Central image/metaphor strong. There are places where that strength is not leveraged.

I think the imagery of the first stanza develops well to convey the theme, especially the simile comparing cigarette ash to snowflakes, then following that simile with the imagery of an avalanche, which serves to show the excessive amount of cigarettes the shawled smoker smokes and needs to smoke in order to obtain temporary peace of mind and also develops nicely in the next line wherein the narrator is swept away in this ash avalanche and is "buried in your worries," as if the smoker's worries melt/burn away into ashes along with their burning cigarettes and their worries are contained in those actual ashes, but this line also seemed to suggest to me that the narrator was also being buried in a verbal avalanche of worries if you will, like the smoker is unloading her worries onto the narrator. Lines 5 and 6 were sort of confusing to me because I didn't really see any meaningful connection between the smoker wearing a shawl and the fire (presumably referring to the lit end of her cigarette) warming her, and the way those lines are worded and put together made it that "that fire" seems to be referring to the shawl in the previous line, as if the shawl is (the origin of) that fire, which doesn't really make sense. I think that connecting the imagery of smoke and fire in line 6 to imagery of a cigarette, etc., rather than to a shawl, would make what "that fire" is referring to more evident. Also, in lines 7 and 8, are the spiderwebs supposed to be the "unwilling partner[s] in your bliss"? It doesn't seem to me that they are, but if so, then "partner" does need to be made plural; if not, then I suggest explicitly mentioning what is the unwilling partner in bliss (e.g., "the wind, an unwilling partner in your bliss"). That being said, I do like the 7^th and 8^th lines; as I interpreted them, the smoker appears to derive some (mildly) perverse pleasure in "exhaling onto spiderwebs," which are fairly delicate, and trying to or succeeding in destroying them, perhaps projecting her own fragile existence and/or psyche and her (self-) destructive nature. Finally, your "sharing a cigarette with the wind" line inspired me to write a few lines, although they kind of strayed from your original idea. But, without further ado:

breath of wind wisps the smoke
you breathe into the mouth of the earth,
caresses your body,
and wafts secondhand-cigarette stench into my nose,
perfused with your perfume