Behind the ID

The leather is the color of a wet brick,

smelling of peppermint and the slow, sick

drag of tobacco he used to smoke in the shed.

I found it in the drawer, among the thread

and dead batteries, a lump of skin and debt.

There’s a photo fused to the yellow window pane,

the plastic has melted into the grain

of a woman's face I've never seen before.

She’s laughing in a booth by a shore

that doesn't look like any place we ever lived.

He kept her tucked behind his social card,

a secret he guarded when the times got hard.

I try to peel them apart but they’ve become one thing,

the stranger's smile and the state’s cold sting,

both of them trapped in the heat of his pocket.