It remains there, the pack of Marlboros on our back steps,
as proof of all of our righteousness, our nonsmoking
and our nonthieving. It’s been at least five days.
I looked in the pack one day. Quite a few left.
Some affinity swims in my DNA, but it’s submerged
under memories of yellowed curtains, bloody noses,
the constant fear of losing my mother. I know just
what a cigarette would feel like between my fingers,
the filter end firm yet yielding. But I left them there,
and so did everyone else, the unspoken Hey, are these
your cigarettes? lingering in fall air. Who could ask
such a thing? Would I go upstairs to the mother
of two little boys and ask her if she smokes? Tonight,
I’m doing laundry. I pass them on the way down,
again on the way up — not my cigarettes. Yours?