Sad early Sunday.
My father sits bus station alone.
In the big chair, in our living room.
A half empty glass of 6 a.m. scotch in one hand.
An unlit White Owl cigar in the other.
It's an odd way to describe a room.
The living room.
Always made me wonder where the dying room was.
Sunlight across the prairie as
Dawn explodes through the big picture window,
And chases out the dull and grey
Repainting the living room instantly
Into bright daytime colours.
My father is a man with no friends,
The most solitary dude in the history of the world.
I hide in the hall.
Six years old, awake, not woke.
No fear.
Just curious
I hear the rasp,
The red tip of a white wood match scratches
Along the strike pad,
A rough scrape down a runway
Of sand and powdered glass,
Before the head flares and ignites.
You know the sound,
You've heard it a million times
Smoke hypnotizes,
Curls and coils off the tobacco tip,
I can't pull my eyes off him.
It's his ritual,
His moment to atone alone,
I watch as a man prepares himself,
To reflect, remember and regret.
Four big puffs
Before the sunlight streaming
Through the picture window
Is subdued.
Clouds and haze,
The tip of his cigar glows ember bright on each inhale.
Pasty Cline sings Crazy.
It was the loneliest I ever felt.
Or would ever feel,
Kneeling in our hallway,
Watching him sit and contemplate
The blue burn.
He circles his lips, his mouth,
And blows a smoke ring.
A perfect curl,
The whitest rolling O drifts,
Into the middle of the room and hovers,
A magic trick.
He closes his eyes and listens.
I'm crazy, crazy for feeling so lonely,
Pasty sums it up and I fall back asleep,
On the carpet in the hall.