I planted tobacco seeds in a park by the Pike River.
Kenosha is an A Marlboro Red. I smoke American spirit light blues. Pavement in the alley cracks. The dumpster hides rats in the summer. Theres a planter sitting there almost unattended. It’s chipping. Corners form on clay-colored plastic. The soil hasn’t been changed over in some time. Small buds of green grow in warmer months. It’s not an intentional kind of growth. Kenosha is gridded streets that bend on their own time. The planter hasn’t been in use since I moved in.
I have this friend in Kenosha. He rents a house on the southside of town. He runs for two hours at a time in a sauna suit. He loves tomb raider and hates the dog he adopted. Sometimes I run into someone in the alley behind my building. Their dog barks. I smoke a cigarette and stare at the planter. On several occasions someone has moved it.
A young father and his partner that live upstairs. Next to the planter, on the fence line, a tree of heaven grows. If you were to crack the stem, a faint aroma of peanut butter might find your nose. Rats will climb that fenceline in the summer. There were chairs behind my building. They have since rotted away. You could sit on those chairs, that belong indoors or in the dumpster, and watch the soil.
Kenosha is the young man in the deli. He wears a white long sleeve shirt under a grey polo. His grey pants have taken on the smell of oil. He breads chicken and knows the regulars. His shoes have grown attached to scraps of chicken and roast beef that layer the floor. If you were to turn the soils of the planter, there might be room for a few basil plants. I really would like to see someone else grow tomatoes.
At the edge of the water, you can smell the sewage plant and watch graffiti begin to erode with the boulders on the shoreline. My friend stopped smoking cigarettes. He wears a mask. He works at Dominos. He is missing teeth. He goes to the bar around the corner from his house. He orders a fishbowl and gets drinks bottled to go. I sit in the bar. I ask for water.
I haven’t been back to Petrifying Springs Park. I won’t know if the tobacco seed grew.