Nov 19, 2015 Friday Fictioneers, Original Short Story

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.

 

Tags: France, Love and loss, Original 100-word short story based on a photo-prompt