Cigarette Butts and Dead Leaves
©November 19th, 2015
By Vijaya Sundaram
Genre: Realistic Fiction
Word Count: 100 words of text, exactly
I sit on the sidewalk near the gutter by our flat, and wait.
Smoking cigarette after cigarette, my fingers stained yellow, my eyes blank, my hands trembling, I wait.
The seasons come and go. Long ago (a year or two, or more?) there had been a bombing near our place.
He’d gone to meet an old friend at our favorite restaurant. “Don’t wait up,” he’d said.
“You know I will,” I’d replied, kissing him.
And I do, every evening.
He was a pillar of flame when he courted me. Now, I am a pillar of ash.
A leaf flutters down.
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With thanks, as always, to our beloved Fairy Blog-Mother, Rochelle Wisoff-Fields, for her gracious and lovely leadership as host of Friday Fictioneers, and to the pithy and imaginative CEAyr, for his evocative photograph.