Hindsight is Heinz 57

Hindsight is Heinz 57

This is a poem about smoke in the air and
something like that my grandmother never lit
up in front of us but insisted that we sit in the
smoking wing of the Wendy's—I had always
thought it was because that was the sunny side,
the warmer side at 10am, when we went there
after swim practice to devour Homestyle
Chicken Sandwiches. And I loved it.

Smoke in sun, a light blue incredible thing
suspended about each diner's eyes and nose
and through the floating pockets everything
remembered a bit younger. Blured tan lines and
crow's feet, Grandma's Maybelline into
porcelain, blurs eyes red like ketchup oozing
from packets that for the first time and just a
short moment will see sunlight for the only
time. And maybe this isn't a poem about the
smoke but about non-smoking laws ruining
chicken sandwiches everywhere or

maybe even a poem about sunlight

rays skipping about in my wake during that last
practice sprint to Grandma, who has come to
take me to Wendy's and then home. Sunlight as
I emerge from a cool summer pool, swim cap
off to reveal a braid clumped with cornstarch
beneath—and Grandma holding me tight in that
prized Team Barracuda towel, wiping all that
ketchup from my shivering, tanned 9yr. old
body.