burning the camel's feet

sweet, sweet tobaccy

The moment you pull out of the parking lot

And enough time passes

That I know you won’t pop your head in the door again

Because you forgot your phone charger

Or some other plastic accessory

That wasn’t on your packing list

I scuttle outside

For a few breaths of cancer.

Yeah, you could say there’s some resentment,

And I only do this to hold on

To the last glimmering memories

Of what it was like to be 19.

The taste is a putrid mess

Of old coffee grounds and feces,

But the smell is what keeps me going outside

Until the “last” pack is depleted

With only a few loose bits of tan fluff in the bottom.

The scent takes me back to high school

Sitting in the back corner of a florescent classroom

Sniffing the sweet leathery residue

Left by the coffin nail

I stole out of my Dad’s open pack

Unattended on the breakfast table.

The chestnut cherub in the desk right behind

Asks for a ride home that afternoon.

Then there’s the cherry headed siren

Spread out on my bed

Half drunk on a can of beer

And the other half on the whimsical fantasy

Of sticking it to her old man and bloated step-mom.

Or the girl with the desert sun in her eyes

I met on the snow covered walkways

So many Christmases ago

And while a kiss would have been grand

I would have carved her essence

From a slab of perfect marble

If she plucked the torch from my mouth

And kissed it with her sense of death

That almost called my number long ago.

But I left them all in the rearview mirror,

Holding an empty pack and a tarnished Zippo

While I sped off for the next conquest.

Yet there’s still some sweetness to be wrung

By digging up old skeletons

And taking one last drag

Straight from their boney lips.