Lungful

We were both drunk and soaked from the pouring rain, and we couldn’t stand up straight without coming dangerously close to falling over. You pulled me close to offer me shelter to light up that cigarette, chanting under your breath for the Gods to permit us a small dose of nicotine before heading home. You actually squealed with joy as I blew out the first puff of smoke. We stood there, watching each other taking a couple of lungfuls of smoke before passing our last cancer stick of the night between us.

The rain didn’t stop hammering down on our heads. We were both shivering from the cold. You ran your hand through your sopping wet hair, saying it got annoying if you let it grow too long. You said you couldn’t remember the last time you got so wet without being on a beach first. You belched then rated it as a 6.5 (“it could’ve done with more depth but a fairly good attempt all in all“). Everything you said was slurred and you would chuckle to yourself between sentences. To anyone sober, it would have sounded like a mess. To me, it sounded like a symphony.

You were the one to take the last puff out of the cigarette, you stubbed it out with your foot. You looked at me and gave me a lopsided smirk. You kissed me on the cheek and said “see ya my lil’ match girl”. You stumbled away into the wet darkness and I didn’t say a word. I had been totally transfixed by you the whole time. That was about 7 years ago.

I think I saw you today. You walked straight past me, I doubt if you even saw me. You looked so different without the rain pouring down over you. It took me a few seconds to place you in my memory. I couldn’t stop thinking about the cigarette that united us for those few brief moments once the memory came back into focus in my mind.

Am I just a hazy memory floating between sub-par belches and annoying hair cuts? I wouldn’t be surprised if I wasn’t your only “lil’ match girl”. I’ve yet to be anyone else’s “lil’ match girl”. It‘s not like I‘ve been waiting for you to return and sweep me off my feet and take me away to some exotic land.

I don’t know how to explain the effect you had on me that night. You charmed me, threw me for a loop. You somehow made me feel special in the time it takes two drunk people to smoke one cigarette. No one else has been able to match that.

It was never meant to be anything more than a few minutes in the pouring rain between us. I know I’ve made that night into something bigger than it actually was. It was just cigarette in the rain. It was our cigarette in the rain.