Matchbook Bag
By A.S. Morgan
Brass-stained fingers are flickering trees in a premature night. A train, like an eclipse, black. Sack, metal, wood and hinge, broken plastic frames with glass shards feel alike beneath the pulse of an atrophied hand. He gentles, he makes his fingers silk, anticipating the broken needle resting there.
Zipper frame, teacup, the battery charge of a laser gun. The battery dead, rain-drowned, but he keeps it, keeps it for a resemblance to the other cylinder he hopes to find. The diamond serial number, rigid and segmented under his thumbnail, is a tattoo for the name of the shape he has lost.
“Gotta light?” two footsteps behind him. Violently afraid, he turns. His eyes are green cylinders near the pools of rain spattering cobblestones. Inside his bag his hand is loose.
“No. I was waiting for one too.”
Footsteps pass between burgeoning clouds. He turns back, fingers mud-soft. He waits for connection. A train, an eclipse, diminishes. He finds a new cylinder within, pulls it from his bag like an ovary. Liquid and malleable it rests between his fingers.
He does not move. He stands perfectly still. He tastes the beeswax heartbeat with fingers and tongue. An ember, like a teardrop, builds in his eye.