By Justin Karcher
After work I head to Caffe Aroma to unwind when Sean shuffles up to me needing to use my phone but most of the calls go to voicemail and as he sighs, I notice there’s a dirty baggy in his left hand and he explains he found the weed in the Jim’s Steakout parking lot in a gasoline rainbow and he makes me smell it and it smells like an abandoned auto shop but Sean looks longingly at the baggy and tells me it smells like sixth grade, how it was probably stuck to a tire, the people in the car driving all over Buffalo never knowing the high they had underneath it all and I think it’s funny how close we are to the things that will make us feel great but never know it and I really want to tell him that the weed probably wasn’t stuck to any tire and that some tired-looking submaker probably dropped it after finishing their shift but why, let people have their hero’s journey because when I glance over Sean’s shoulder out the window I see the panhandling sun starting to set and in a few hours I know we’ll all be chasing highs in low places, what it’s like coming up from the underground and not making it all the way.
Justin Karcher (Twitter: @justin_karcher, Bluesky: justinkarcher.bsky.social) is a Best of the Net- and Pushcart-nominated poet and playwright born and raised in Buffalo, NY.
Photo provided by author.
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