What is smoke? my daughter asks

beside a campfire I can’t quite get to flame.

I know it’s not a liquid, she says.

Is it a gas? Is it a solid?

Simple. Straightforward. Something

I should know, I’m sure.

I start to say it’s what’s left

when the wood gives up the ghost,

but then I think of ash—

I always think of ash,

how it’s something but nothing,

what’s left when something’s gone.

There was a woman, then there was ash

her husband and the men she loved

scattered on the beach. The wind

wouldn’t let her stay there where she wanted.

My mother, seeding cancer, more ash

than paper dangling from her Lucky Strike.

What is it? my daughter says.

Nothing, I respond.

No, she says, what is smoke? I say

It’s what I make instead of fire.