Cigar Caps in the Dollar Store Parking Lot

You ask me: What is the collective noun for a handful of spent cigars beneath the knotty, crooked oak in the parking lot outside the Dollar Store where you work, dark nubs nestled like easter eggs in the dewy grass, loops of paper bands snug around the ends, the not-Dollar-Store silence, no voices raised or slurring, those brown slugs beneath that exhale of shade, an island of green in a sea of gray asphalt, no promises made, no small talk at all, although you are reminded of the way everyone pretends with your mother, the way they nod when she says, It’s our tenth wedding anniversary to your brother, when she says, You’ve come for my money, haven’t you, when she says, The moon behind the moon is the only place I’ll live, everyone nodding, shoring their hearts against the vanishing of her addled brain, so I answer in the only way I know how, quietly, because of the unyielding din already in your head, because you are besieged by nouns collecting dust on those Dollar Store shelves and still you manage to smile, so I answer you plainly: a smoke.