A Story

Guaranteed that where I want this to go, It will not.

Anyway;



It was raining slightly, cloudy, but the wind stood out the most. The gentle rain wasn’t helping either. Streetlights illuminated narrow beams of rain, giving the street a warm, glowing feeling, despite the cold air. The sound hit me as much as the warmth did, as I entered the crowded room. The sound of so many totally different stories being told, some laughing, others serious. Moods varied throughout the entire room, each threatening the next; regret as much as happiness, anger as much as pleasure. I remembered the old match box, taped tightly shut with black tape, never removed or replaced over all these years. The matchbox was musty, the tape frayed and tearing. A deep sigh raked my heavy chest, all the weight of these years in the dark coming to a climax on this night. I wanted to know the truth, but the truth daunted me. Like a perfect rose, my desire for answers was riddled with thorns.
I consciously became aware of the cold once more as I sat at a table in no particular place in the room, not hidden in the corner, or out in the open. There was no need to be conspicuous, but a slight compelling for privacy. The man across the table from me acknowledged my arrival with no more than a slight change in his posture. My father. He subtly became defensive, enclosed and personal. Without voicing my shock, I noticed that his ring was gone. Such a subtle feature, yet it stung with a lifetime of selfless patience. So much had occurred; I needed to fill in the gaps for myself. But the cold and even formal appearance of the man opposite me suggested that he too, wanted answers. Gradually the muffled roar of frivolities and somberness spinning through the room began to fade into the night, like the rain passing in and out of the beams of light in the street. The room emptied and with it went the cheeriness, when only a few detached customers remained. He shifted once more, and my hand wrapped around the matchbox in my pocket, in a reassuring, even protective instinct. I fought back feelings of regret with a constant reminder in my head, a mantra to prompt my sense of success; the box was still shut, I had done the right thing.
A shift in his posture woke me from complex musings, his fingers nervously closing around his ring finger, in a habitual gesture, twisting the ring that was no longer there. He too was aware of this seemingly pointless action, and it hurt him deeply. I could see the loss in his eyes, his regret for a choice taken the wrong way, his yearning for something more, something different. A night of long awaited repentance, and yet, up to this point, nothing had been said.
“The match box, is it still closed?”
“Yes, it is.”
And with that he left, the cold air pushing my eyes to tears, forcing me to turn away. Without second thought, I withdrew the matchbox, as naïve and clueless in its old age as I was unsuitably wise for my youth. Using a knife from the table before me, I began to cut away the black tape. With shaking hands I slid the box out from its cover, turning the container upside down, pouring whatever the box held into my hand. The contents spilled into my hands, falling between my fingers to the floor, the sound not unlike that of the falling rain outside. Matches.