From Katie's prompt: "Write a poem which includes the line 'ashtrays go astray.'"

ashtrays go astray
a gutted cell phone splays
cigarette butts and grey dust
over books whose pages
yellow like bruises
of atrophied memory

beer bottles crowd the table
like gravestones
commemorating cathexis
of long-dead nights
and the fan wheezes
weakly through nicotene
clouds of conversation

we swat away, lazily,
like the hum of flies
trailing from the open fridge
whose half-light casts shadows
where none were before.

when we remember
to check the VCR's clock
we'll groan at those ghostly
green digits-- 1:17
and collapse in alcoholic heaps

entwined on twin beds
rubbing thin beads
of sweat between our bodies
until finally the warm
darkness tugs us to sleep.