When a certain scent wafts on the wind, it brings back those long summer days - and the winter ones too - when we all sat outside together smoking and talking, laughing at your stories. You were always the funny one quick with a joke
and a smile, the glint of devilment in your fathomless eyes. You beguiled us all with your charming Cajun ways talking about growing up on the bayou, riding bikes in the cane fields where you claimed you once saw a Big Foot, how the older boys chased you
and hit you with brooms at Courir de Mardi Gras. But then The Big One came and washed us all away to Memphis, Dallas, Asheville, and even to New York, scattered from our ribbon cane murmurs and confidences, our laughter and complacence. Washed away, never to be the same again.
Charlotte Hamrick’s poetry, prose, and photography has been published in numerous online and print journals. She is a Pushcart Prize Nominee and was a Finalist for the 15th Glass Woman Prize for her Creative Non-Fiction. She is Creative Nonfiction Editor for Barren Magazine and lives in New Orleans with her husband and a menagerie of rescued pets.
