You want to be the Marlboro Man:
The Caucasian cowboy
Who spends weeks in
Darkest Africa, but
Flies home to a perfect family
In white suburbia.
Before he crosses the threshold
His wife brushes down
His brown leather loafers.
To not track factory dust
Into the hardwood house.
The grease is still under his nails.
From fitting and turning
From sixteen
In the same tobacco plant
He runs (from) now.
His father worked there too.
And so, sick of the smell
Of uncured tobacco,
He has never smoked a day in his life.
He doesn’t smoke like his father did.
Vices don’t look the same.
Cheat days are infrequent.
He cheats a few times.
He drives the sportscar home drunk.
It makes him care less
When people blow smoke.
Stout heavy footsteps
Step cigarette lighter
When he can forget
Potential unrealized.
He is bored.
He hates his fireless life.
He hates his high school diploma.
Hates me most of all.
Caught smoking in the bathroom stall
Of the private school
He paid for.
Rolling paper on the roof
At the college
He brags to colleagues about.
With all the life he gives
While he remains unfree—
You want to be the Marlboro Man.
But the Marlboro Man wants to be me.
For Mom
I found the perfect hiding place
Before you came to look.
Where doors are meant for shutting
And latches meant to hook.
He told me that he hid somewhere
And we could hide again—
You can be hidden almost anywhere
By the time you get to ten.
And the dark can feel warm,
The edges like your own,
You can learn to make anywhere
Feel like a home.
But there is a light from the hall
In the crack in the door—
This place is not the world,
I cannot hide here anymore.
So, I open my eyes,
And the game’s finally through.
I thought least of all
That you’d be hiding here too.
But games are meant to end,
And downward we count.
I’m going with or without you.
Come out, come out.