Terminal Traits
The man in the hospital gown sits in helpless regret
He remembers
A little boy in a baseball cap
Innocently tugging on his mother’s skirt asking,
“Mama, what’s that man doin’ over there?
He points at a slouching man leaning against the wall of the grocery store.
Displaying his insecurities to all he meets just in the way he carries himself, he smokes cigarette after cigarette,
avoiding eye contact with all who pass while attracting the gaze of many.
Her face wrought with memories of her father on the porch,
But not present at college graduations or birthdays, his Mama fervently replies
“That man is buildin’ his own coffin.”
Her voice is stern now; fearful her son won’t get the message, she stops walking and turns toward her son.
“Ya never get caught up in that junk, ya hear me?”
For he will hear it many times, for a while, but after that
The teenagers store their mother’s careful heedings in the back of their heads,
Like last months’ spelling words because no one else bothers to remember them
And the terminal trait of the immature is to be popular for your skill in conformity
“That there is a cigarette, the stupidest thing ya could ever do to yourself!”
But the little boy in the baseball cap is too curious
Fatally curious.
As he and his worry-hearted Mama in the long skirt walk through the suffocating cloud of
Smoke, ridden with the stench of insecurity, addiction, and anguish
Into the grocery store
Where they are safe from the smoke but not the irrevocable curiosity of a little boy in a baseball cap,
He wonders to his Mama why somebody would do something that’ll kill ya
“Well son, sometimes they don’t know, but most of the time, they don’t think. Somebody hands them a cigarette and they just take it ‘cause nobody wants to be the one who cares.
She continues with her shopping, her mind is busy with her grocery list and that days events as well as concern for her child. She speaks as though to lecture the boy, though her thoughts are those of worry.
“Now you gotta great little brain in there and I want ya to use it good. Sometimes people look for happiness in the wrong ways,and let me tell ya – once you start
Ya can’t stop.”
And that little boy in the baseball cap with his worry-hearted Mama in the long skirt
Walked out of the store with a question that he kept to himself:
How could he not be able to stop? He wondered if Mama was lying because knew he could control his own mind.
And as the man saying goodbye, with the Mama waiting for his company, he still sits in helpless regret,
Remembering.
Asking himself why he hadn’t listened to his wise Mama
YOU ARE READING
Terminal Traits
PoesiaHUGS NOT DRUGS YO GET WITH IT! An exposure of conformity and bad decisions, as well as motherly concern and regret. I do not want to offend any smokers, only discourage tobbaco and recreational drugs. When you are addicted, you are not your own bo...
