He was a two-pack-a-day smoker, on bad days

three, and once on a smoke break explained

   how he first discovered cigarettes

when he was 10, with his friend, sticking a clothes hanger

into a locked drawer

in his uncle’s nightstand—a drawer that opened

just a crack and contained solely

a pistol and the pack.

  If they’d been able to use the hanger to lift the pistol

it would have been a gunshot:

We were boys

                     eyes only for trouble

and a hunger for destruction they can’t explain, even now—

but because they could reach the cigarettes instead

  it will likely be cancer and

to a question I didn’t ask

he said, Yes I do wish

                     it were the gun

                                 some days