100 years ago my aunt had this cigarette rolling machine.
I would roll cigarette’s for her and my uncle. I was…8 or 9?
Anyway, I would pull the tobacco from this can. Jam it into the machine. Slide a filtered paper cylinder on a protuberance.
And, like an old school credit card lithographer, I would pop out a tube of filtered moments.
Moments to talk over.
Moments to look at coffee steam.
Moments to look at the sky.
The neighbourhood.
The window.
So many pasts.
Whenever I hear tin on tin I think of the can. Whenever I smell fresh tobacco I think of that machine. I remember it being fun. It was easy. A child could, and did, do it.
My uncle died a few months ago.
You never get to say goodbye by the way.
You don’t.
I miss Cape Breton.
I miss 100 years ago.
The ocean had a calming way of slapping your silly face with ancient liquified sodium.
This is what life is about I suppose.
The Trent Wilkie 