Of Nests and Axes

It was the wait.

He ran his fingers through the gray, unwashed hair and looked for his lighter. He did not smoke, yet carried a lighter as one carries a candle when walking through life. And waiting. Only once before had he stroked the flint holding the lighter in his left hand and by hitting the steel wheel with his right hand, as one would imitate a Karate chop. Or an abrupt caress of a dear one’s head in the morgue. Because he could not say goodbye, nor hello. So he lit his lighter to feel the heat in his palms. So he would not forget how it felt to hold fire in his hands, this time en guise of a candle.

He had said goodbye before, many times. Now it had no meaning. There was nothing good about it, and he knew it was the last moment together. There was nothing else beyond the moon and skies for him, for it never was. He was here for no reason. “Tout est accident” he had once written. All was a happening without a consequence.

He blew the flame off and inhaled the smoke from the burnt wicker. He could smell the lighter fluid and it reminded him of burning cities. He had waited then as well. But it was a different wait, as she had a name and the city was burning. He had found it ironic that cities next to salty seas can burn for so long.

His fingers were now oily and smelled of past flames. His Zippo lighter was slightly warm and it felt good putting it in his pocket.

He got up; walked to the end of the street, and sat down on the stone steps of a row house. He could almost look through the window of the family-owned Korean dry cleaner’s store, and admire the white hands of the woman pressing a shirt. She was surrounded with a halo of steam and he recalled the smell of solvents and starch on warm cotton shirts. He had not worn a starched shirt for a long time. But he did not miss it. He missed other things though. He looked at the white hands of the Korean woman, shut his eyes to remember hands that had touched him, got up again and walked away. It is good to work in a dry cleaner in October, he thought.

He was not homeless. Just that his home had left him. Or had left him alone. He was not time-bound; he was just unshaved and older. He could go to where the roads end, but he was worried that the end of roads would be a lonely place to be.

So, he decided to wait a bit longer.

October 19, 2012

©Vahé Kazandjian, 2013