My Parents Sharing a Cigarette After Dinner, New York, 1976

Julie Anne Kleinman

Before the end, there were ordered beginnings.
Meat.
Starch.
Vegetable.
Then, my father rising,
rooting through my mother’s purse that smelled like
Doublemint and True Blue 100s
joined with sticky leather cracked in spots,
because she didn’t know how to preserve that kind of thing,
didn’t know about mink oils and buffing brushes,
only how to shop for what she needed.
Not that he knew either,
searching, searching,
through unzipped pockets and clouds of stiffened tissues,
till he found the almost-crushed packet and removed
just one
—as if two might kill, but one would affirm they were still alive—
and she, ripping matches from flimsy cardboard books,
the kind they still give away at gas stations today,
striking, striking
—snap—
until one caught.
A disposable lighter would have made things faster, easier,
but to buy one meant you were a smoker,
and they were just people who liked a cigarette after a meal,
ashes falling into plates of food no longer desired,
smoldering double helix performing minuets between
hands and lips and fingers and tongues,
twisting, reaching, until finally
extinguished into whatever remained.
A bit of gristle.
A gutted potato.
The damp indifference of a cucumber half-moon.

Julie Anne Kleinman worked for many years as a hairstylist in the San Francisco Bay Area and, later, as a teacher. She is currently employed as a home care provider in Oakland, California, where she resides with her family. She holds a bachelor’s degree in English from the University of California at Berkeley. “My Parents Sharing a Cigarette After Dinner, New York, 1976” is her first published work.