I wrote “Cigars” about a friend of my brother’s who drown when he was 14. The conversation I had with him within the poem was, to the best of my recollection, true. I held a certain amount of amorphous guilt about his death. I’d seen him a day or so before his death and, for selfish teenage boy reasons, I ushered him away. I had a certain amount of trouble reconciling my feelings partially due to the fact that I had any. In the town where I grew up everyone knew a dead kid.
Cigars
A year ago today
We sat at my table
And talked about the big and the small
A year ago today
We talked first loves
First lusts
The women we had and
The women we wanted
A year ago today
We stood over a machine
And speculated what was making
It tick and wheeze and sputter so
A year ago we stared at stars
And wondered their purpose
We sat smoking cigars
Their pungent odor
Irritating our eyes
I told you my worries
You said “Everything works out”
You smiled and made it all simple
I don’t smoke cigars anymore
My eyes still water though
Because a year ago tomorrow
I saw them pull you
From the water.
A pretty childish punch at the end there, but hey, at least I was trying to write my feelings, right? Oh, and the “me” in the poem was totally lying. I still smoked cigars.