First Communion - Vic Nogay
The last day of the last summer before you got a car, we got the guts to steal the wine from the church refrigerator. We’d grown bored with our bikes and our coffee addictions—sweet frozen drinks, more ice cream than anything else. We were desperate to taste womanhood but couldn’t stomach even one bitter sip. The boys we loved, lifted on the power recent puberty had given them, loved to hold our hands or wrap their arms around our waists. When they kissed us, our mouths would open, and our words would come rushing out. But the boys didn’t hear us, and there was nothing we made them long to say.
We’d never had alcohol before. By our logic, drinking the Blood of Christ would be the safest way to start. Even if we got drunk, it would be a holy fire inside us. We rode our bikes the fast mile to the church, passed the immaculate main entrance and stashed them in the unpruned shrubs by the back door. We shuffled soft across the threshold, feet like feathers on the runner. In the kitchen, you pulled your t-shirt over your nose against the years-old smell of community meals, warm bird gravy boiled over on the stove. The linoleum was sticky, and the soles of our sneakers made crisp gum wrapper sounds with each step.
We didn’t bother with the chalice, just took the crystal decanter from the back of the food-stained fridge and replaced it with our thawing mochaccinos. I could think of no safer space in the house of God than under the sink, so I opened the old wood-rotten cabinet and crawled inside; you followed tepidly behind.
It was almost black in there, except for the water-worn splintering wood around misfitted pipes where the light got in. All there was to do was listen and taste. I heard you shuffling, nervous in the dark, heard the clinking of glass as you pulled out the stopper, the sloshing, the deep breath you took as you put the bottle mouth to yours, tipping the crystal back, guess-measuring by the shifting weight of the wine how much was coming and how fast. You were careful not to spill, careful not to waste. I heard the wine wet your lips and pool behind your teeth. There was a pin-prick numbness in my fingertips as I tried to imagine the sweet red grape, watered down, and what it must have felt like on your tongue.
Originally published by CLOVES Literary, June 2022
Vic Nogay is a writer from Ohio. Her work has been nominated for the Pushcart Prize and Best Microfiction. She is the author of the micro poetry chapbook under fire under water (tiny wren 2022) and is the Micro Editor of Identity Theory. Find her online @vicnogaywrites or haunting Ohio’s crossroads.
