Cigarette - Vic Nogay

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.