Not today

 

An old and beyond healing house sat alone in a field of crops forgotten. Time and whether combined forces leaving it to decay until it could not stand on its own. But what tales it could tell if anyone cared to listen. He built it with his own two hands each nail hammered a testament of strength and determination.

Today the winds blow slapping overgrown weeds against its side like lashes from a bullwhip meant to cause even more pain than the house had already seen. Harsh winters and scorching summers all collided over time erasing the whitewash of its birth, leaving bare planks and rusty nails.

There were happy times in the small rooms that brought forth new lives and laid to rest those who served her well. A franklin stove sat quietly in a corner never again to brown biscuits or warm frozen hands. I wondered how many candlelit conversations took place around it.

Standing alone in the main room I felt the house take soft breaths as if each one would be its last. A final gust of wind sending it crashing to the ground, unnoticed, never heard. Not today though as the winds were calm and the old house would stay another day, another memory, another story to be told.

Black pan

 

He sat in a worn-out leather chair, his slippers he had too many years to count. Those plaid ones with yellowed fur. On the table next to him were his things he liked to call it. Hand-rolled cigarettes in a plastic soap holder, a lighter and a can of fluid, and one of those things that looked like a Pez dispenser but it held flints. A telephone crusted with grease and dust. Nobody called much anymore. There was one single picture in a gold wooden frame of all three kids who went their own ways years ago. That table was full of his things as he liked to call it.

By rights, the apartment should have been condemned by the health department a long time ago but he didn’t care about things like that. A slow leak that seeped into the carpets over time producing mold just about everywhere. The kitchen had two surfaces that weren’t cluttered, the stovetop where he did all his cooking in a black cast iron pan that he never washed he just wiped the grease out until the next meal. And the spot for the coffee pot which he emptied twice a day or more.

The bedroom was small and very neat. Clothes on hangers the bed made every day. The old school military still stuck with him. The bathroom was as clean as it could be except for the smell of urine as he more often than not missed the toilet. “You would too” he would say waving away anybody who brought it up. By ten in the morning, he was ready for a nip that he poured into his third cup of coffee settling into his old chair and waiting for the day to pass.

He enjoyed visitors even though he denied It. But the only ones he got were from his kids who stopped in to check on him and make sure he hadn’t burned he apartment to the ground. His life had once been full, but he drank it all away and blamed it on everything and anyone. I remember the good days and years and it's those memories that I like to remember but, I will never get the pictures out of my mind of greased pans and the smell of urine. He passed a decade or so ago and the old apartment building was torn down. I stopped in front of where it once stood on a recent visit. I walked into the empty lot and came across an old black pan still greasy and waiting to be used again. Yes, I took it with me I had to its all I have left of him.