Next to His Coffee

a pack of hand rolled smokes cellophane wrapper stained the color of chaw, a man wakes from sleeping with his quittings, a life’s worth of ashtrays, saucers, bottles with cigarette buoys bobbing in back wash, stubbies, quarts, a life lived before forties. At the market, he asks the lady for Marlboros in a box, visiting the old neighborhood, he wanted the box for the last tour. Stories return about spun glass filters, damage they did, this long before the man on the horse and his skeletal ads. Luckies red heart flashes ember end, straights too strong for this return. The point of no return turns out to have little to do with smoke, though the trick it plays on bees calls the startle reflex of the man who finds two murder hornets in his pack of blunts, he jumps rattled at movement, antennae quick slip and he shakes the pack like the last smoke before execution and the mover drops to the floor and he puts it out like a butt he twists out before a return to class with his buddy Cunningham, the Vietnam Vet who smokes in class but out the window.