WALMART WEATHER (SMELL YA LATER)

The time machine smells
of today’s rainy afternoon,
transport me back
to being young and dumb,
stealing basketball cards and deodorant
from K-Mart, taking the deodorant
back to Walmart,
using the money
to buy McDonald’s –
the smell of which
makes me sick with nostalgia,
so the McRib diet
of two weeks ago
goes beyond dipping
it in ranch and writing about it.

When I was a boy,
watching basketball
and drowning out
the screams of my mother
or her boyfriend of the month,
while the smell of boiled bacon
and paint wafting
through the trailer,
I, simple and sad,
fretting the life I did not have,
thought, nee knew,
getting out of there was key
to living and dreaming,
yet I did not know how.

My grandmother had just passed away,
the petrichor of the afternoon
of her collapse
still resonates with me,
because she was my protector,
as does the smell of laundry
which she was folding
when she fell –
dying before she hit the floor,
changing everything, evermore.

The smell of the summer of fear,
clearing the candle
for unspeakable violence,
juxtaposed the quiet dew-damp mornings,
on which the open windows
would let in the scents of possibility,
the songs of birds,
before returning to an afternoon
of alcoholic anarchy
in the middle of my upbringing;
when I was supposed to be
doing homework,
I was making sure adults
didn’t kill themselves.

If that boy could see me now,
he would wonder why
I am not a park ranger
(Also curse me for being in Florida),
but I bet he would be simply happy
with the nature of the future
and how good it smells –
freedom and freshly baked
chocolate chip cookies,
both of which I can eat whenever I want,
without worry, without the stolen war…within.