She gave me a car and I turned it
into an ashtray. Tapping one hand out
the window the white flakes
floating off onto my pants.
“I saw Dan. He was smoking in the car.”
And I don’t blame anyone.
Not my hand. Not my matches.
Blameless pockets that carried those Camels.
Certainly not Mona Tell.
Which was her real name!
I regret the ashtray part a little. And maybe
writing another poem about cigarettes.
But this isn’t really about cigarettes.
It’s about the ’79 brown Chevy Impala
I drove in high school and
how it smelled like burnt strawberries from cigarettes and the strawberry smell
I brought home from the perfume factory.
About that time Mrs. Tell
saw me driving around town
and told my mom, and I don’t regret any of it.
I don’t regret most of it.
That floating ashtray
tapping through the I-section
down Imbrook Lane, past Idlewild
cigarette fumes
in the strawberry night.