Craving
by Trey Burnart Hall
This morning walking Waylon on our usual route
down Junaluska, a neighbor I’ve never seen
before stands in her yard admiring her flower bushes.
I don’t know the type of flower, but the blossoms look like
small magnolias, pinkish white petals. She wears
a brown sherpa vest. Her hair a silver bob. One hand rests
on her hip and the other holds a cigarette between
her pointer and middle finger. She sips the cigarette
like morning coffee, steam dissipating into the spring
air, sickly sweet. I watch her smoke and become a child,
Ninny in a nightgown, her blue willow comforter snowy
with ash, Salem menthols from the fridge and diet coke
on her wicker dresser. I blow baby powder
through a dollar store cigarette and we watch Maury,
who’s the daddy, feet crossed, threadbare cheetah
print slippers. And I am a child and then I am,
as the woman mouths something I cannot hear,
grown again. I take out my earbuds and she repeats,
“Your dog, your dog is so beautiful.”
He looks at her eagerly and the petals
flinch with each gust and I want to say
I love you and drop the leash, let Waylon frolic
feral across the yard. I want to grab her hands
and bastardize a waltz, one two three, one two three,
stepping on her toes and tearing up the perfect lawn.
I want to bum a smoke and kiss god again with each
cloud passing across my broken voice because I will never
smoke again except right now, right here with this stranger
and I will run across mountains to buy a carton
for Ninny and tell her to forget the doctor, just one,
crack the pack open, turn the lucky, strike a match
against the oxygen tank because we are alive
and spring still blooms despite knowing everything.
And I tell this stranger who I’ve known my whole life,
and won’t see again, “Thank you,”
and forget to ask her name.