by Salena Casha
The john doesn’t need a match to size up 57th, his black soles undisturbed by slushed tundra, the slim doll hanging off his lips a forked tongue. You’re thin and white and burnt and it’s almost like he could put you between his teeth and smoke you without a filter.
Big yellow sharps, wolf stalking moon.
Riding red, you think, matches meant for other people burning a hole in your pocket. Maybe you could light one, cup it over a spoon and say, to see you better, dear. But you don’t need a match for that. Not with what big eyes you have that watch how the john eats gummed up cement by your feet, the gray leaking out his eyes as his lips curl, baring teeth.
He’s the sort you’ve seen have gasoline for breakfast and chew through the rotted wood of old marionettes that were never meant for children. He’s the sort you could set alight with nothing but a look because you’ve burned yourself over on 8th, and 113th, and even in the old Brooklyn Backyard where a boy’s fist used to turn the snow pink not Red until you said,
Who’s the wolf now?
His steel toes shine his portrait in reverse and you know it’s not your grandma saying, “It’s a dog eat dog world, darling” because wolves might as well be extinct, all the use they have. You stopped bleeding any color except the orange of a glowing coal years ago.
So instead you pull a match from your pocket and skate across his shadowed waste as the clock strikes twelve to say, “Can I bum a cigarette?”
Because some unlit things are enough to start a fire.
Salena Casha‘s work has appeared in over 100 publications in the last decade. Her most recent work can be found on Pithead Chapel, Scrawl Place, CLOVES, and Variety Pack. She survives New England winters on good beer and black coffee. Follow her on twitter @salaylay_c
A-minor 