Do you have a cigarette?
A short narrative poem
Hey y’all,
Once again, I come with an admission: I, like all of you, have been busy. I’ve been working on my teaching license and still working my full time job lately, so it’s been slow going on some of my other fuller form essays and other pieces I’ve been working on.
With that, I actually had a poem I had written for a short form narrative poetry competition that I’d like to share for today. Give it a read, let me know what you think.
Thanks!
I thought I could get away from it all by sitting next to the river next to a landfill next to a McDonald’s next to a Wal-Mart next to Tyson chicken factory plant.
Maybe I was wrong.
Maybe.
So I’m sitting there, clouds overcast, wind pushing some shitty, decayed brown leaves, thinking, “If only I could be inspired to actually write something right now. If only this shit worked ever.
Maybe I was wrong.
Maybe.”
Canadian geese cruise by, heads ducked down into the muddy, Earthen water, not giving a shit about me, and the loud clack clack clack of my fingers on the keys. What are they doing, exactly? Like, I get that maybe they’ve got something going on in those craniums of theirs but…maybe I’m wrong.
Maybe.
The river here in Fayetteville is…nice, but it’s like every other river, ever. It bends, turns in on itself, maybe empties into an estuary somewhere. Maybe it turns another body of water, that then turns into the clouds that are above me.
Maybe I’m wrong.
Maybe.
I start to wonder, how’d I get here, exactly? And no, before you start jumping to the conclusion, “Well, we were all formed by the same cosmic explosion of energy, gravity, space, time…” Let me stop you there. I’m not thinking about that. I’m thinking about all the things I did wrong…and maybe how I’m wrong.
There’s a bend around the river I can’t really see. The geese start bobbing along to the other side, unaware of what’s over there. Of course, probably more nothing, on top of more nothing, till all the little sunlight filters down to the bottom, where all the brim, bass, catfish, and other random fish feed.
But who knows, right?
Maybe I’m wrong.
Maybe.
I can’t believe I did that to her. I won’t get into the specifics. Just know that every man has done something…wrong, to a woman. At some point, at some time, on an ephemeral horizon of all our lives making the same dirty fucking collisions with each other.
I was wrong and am wrong.
I know about that for a certainty.
“Excuse me, sir,” a lilting, young voice calls out. My vision turns to my periphery, where a tan, strong looking guy is there. Maybe I’m assuming he was a guy. Maybe they weren’t. Maybe it’s my masculine gaze making everything and everyone a man.
Probably.
Anyway, so I turn to greet the stranger, clad in a mid-rif bearing tank top, navel out to the world to show an inny from the day they were born. There’s a slight lean and a hand on the hips, acting all casual like. They’re standing there, looking at me, eyes narrowed because of the sun setting right behind me.
“Do you have a cigarette,” their lilting, lisp-bitten voice calls out. I can’t help but think, “They’re probably queer. Or non-binary. Or a whole host of perspectives and identities I’ll never be able to encapsulate by writing this.” They sit there, hand on the hip, swaying back and forth till I answer them.
Or at least, if I choose to.
I say, modestly but with some casual confidence, “Sorry man, I don’t.”
Nothing happens for a second, just a casual nod of the head to say, “Damn. That sucks. I wish you had a cigarette.” Then, eventually, when no words escape their lips after a second, they walk by, saying, “Damn. Why does no one smoke cigarettes anymore?”
I don’t really say anything. At first, I think, “Well, this person sure does sound upset, at the false perception that no one smokes anymore.” But then, I see them walking away, hand shaking, offering a silent plea for a cigarette. Eventually, they disappear around a bend in the river, disappearing into an estuary, and never see them again.
Another family stops by the small bank, just down about 100 feet from me. Water laps up into the hands of a small child with a fro, and they almost start to drink it, till the mom slaps the hand away, saying, “Hey! Don’t drink that. There’s no tellin’ what pees and poops down there!” And the child laughs with glee, delighted at what they know and don’t know now.
Building prospectors come by, pointing out at empty lots of land, trees, bits of dirt and rock, muttering to themselves in Business Speak, “Hmm. Ripe for exploitation. Here, get some shots of this, then we’ll send ‘em back to the office. See what they think of putting a pipeline out here. And then they disappear around the bend, where I don’t see them.
I think about my grandpa, how he nearly died recently. You don’t really know what mortality is, till you see an 81 year old man nearly shit himself in front of you, only a hospital gown to obscure the diaper in front of you.
He might disappear before I know it.
Rivers are a potent metaphor to hide behind, when there’s a hole gnawing away something in you. Sure, you can hide behind a keyboard, but who knows when you’ll be sent to reckon for what you did once.
Maybe I’m wrong.
Hopefully.