The fencepost obscures his wrist

He walks by and it starts to mist

His hand holds something – he brings it to his mouth

In the cool air I see him breathe out

He licks his lips

I watch from my vantage point

We live on the same street but thankfully he doesn’t recognize me

I always catch a glimpse – like a guardian angel or an eerie stalker

However you want to view it

I know the guy’s a walker

He walks by my house every day

I treat him every other Monday

Wishing the drugs would shrink his tumor away

But we both know he keeps smoking

I hope he knows I’m not joking when I tell him those things will kill him

He once told me that cigarettes are the greatest villain

They were there for him when his family left and when he was on the battlefield scared to death

He said, “What a friend”

That white haired man walks by me in the now wind

Everyday he holds something – his wrist is aligned with the fencepost

And he licks his lips

One day I came home

In my mailbox there was a sticky note stuffed within a sealed white envelope

It read, “Thanks for everything but I’ve been walking your street, know you’ve been watching me. Thanks for the inhalers and the chemotherapy. You know, trying to figure people out will wear you down. Like cigarettes, patients are villains too – they won’t listen and they’ll manipulate you. Is money ever worth it? You and I are more similar than you realize.”

The paper the next day said that man had died

He owned all the cigarette manufacturing chains

There was a massive fortune in his name

He’d left me a check in that envelope – it was stained yellow

In his note he said to find the cure for the villain’s poison: “addiction, lung cancer, COPD”

It was better than fiction and motivated me

Turns out that man had died while out for a walk

Stuck between his cyanotic fingers was something like a stalk: a thin cigarette

The air and ground were wet

Mist

I held his handwritten note and check in my fist

He was a patient I’d never forget