do you know the feeling
when you’re sitting outside in the summer,
the sun’s dying but the air is still warm,
and there’s no one around but the bugs biting
and a duck calling and a frog groaning in the creek, and maybe
the moon is turning on and a horn is honking and there’s a little dog snoring at your feet,
you, asleep in your contentment,
sloth-drunk and at peace?
that’s when i smell it -
a cigarette‘s suggestion,
dilatory on approach
but a thunderous reminder
of when i sat with you in the grotto,
the haze of dusk setting in,
and i was wearing his clothes.
when everyone saw the good,
you saw all my bad potential.
we smiled, shameless
at the lived-in truth of us,
and i took the first drag.
Bio:
Vic Nogay is an emerging writer; her work tends to explore small traumas, misremembrances, and Ohio, where she is from. Her work appears in The Daily Drunk. After graduating from college, she discovered a passion for animal welfare working as a humane agent. Her return to writing is a personal reclamation.