Toxic

Brother,
the love you keep
is toxic.
And from a mile away
I watch,
scowling as you suffocate
in the fumes.

But time and time again,
you return
to that barren wasteland,
that hollow trunk
for somehow you hope
no, believe-
in a long extinguished star.

To me,
you are simply foolish;
desperate.
But perhaps it is I who is
blind and silly
for I am unable to gaze past the smoke
and see the embers within.