I have this friend, Moses.
Smart in the way that makes you afraid to say stupid things,
and sensitive in the way that makes you afraid to say anything at all

He wears blue corduroy like he got it personally from the seventies
and those black square glasses that make him look like the kind of person
whos always halfway between a poetry reading and a chess tournament.

He rarely smokes and it’s extremely specific tobacco he rolls himself,
like every cigarette is a small personal letter.
And somehow – no matter the day, the weather or the argument,
there is always tobacco in his pocket.
Not because he’s about to smoke.
Not because he just did.
It’s just there, like a loaded question.

Once in a blue moon for no reason I can see,
he’ll pull it out, roll a quick cigarette,
and light it with the kind of calm you could bottle and sell to monks.

Then he says something.
Always low like a secret he is telling to the cigarette, not to me.
Something that lodges in my head for weeks.
And today, without looking up, he said:

“Don’t kill the pain – invite it to coffee.
Ask it questions until it starts telling you secrets”

I didn’t answer.
Partly because I was thinking about what he said,
and partly because I was still wondering about something else.