“May I have a light?”
A man approached me
and I handed him the cigarette I was smoking.
At such a time, on a park bench,
a woman enjoying the night breeze, smoking, yes,
but I wasn’t of a suspicious age, and the man himself
looked like someone who’d say, “I just recently retired.”

It probably was his last one for the day.
He lit the cigarette in his mouth
and took a delicious, deep drag on it.
In the darkness I saw
a tiny light come alive and breathe like a ditch firefly.

Before then I had handed things
to many people:
silk, fur, liquor, gold engravings.
But never once had I seen
any of these glow like that
the moment it moved to the other hand.
Not even a love quatrain I’d written with all my heart.

When he finished smoking,
he said, “Thank you,” and slowly walked away.
The same words came to my throat.
“Thank you,” I said,
after the man disappeared in the darkness.