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When our life is getting old!

I just couldn’t figure out why this sober man believed he could wrap himself in a diaper of cigarette smoke and feel like a baby. He did not smoke but swallowed the cigarettes draining the nicotine out of them and grew flowers.

I did not realize when he got older. Only the stagnant smell suggested that the grumble, the vanity and the discontent were not a result of his exhaustion.

Today he surprised me again. He locked the door and threw the key over his shoulder.

“That brings luck; like when you throw a horseshoe!” He said that and was off, pleased to have locked his luck in the narrow package with windows. I thought people like him had no dreams at all. I opened the newspaper today to find a story about the dreams of a woman who sold socks. She dreamt of being a cleaner. I stole her idea and felt like a hygienist who had just washed another brain polluted with illusions.

I wondered how to make him get back home, and he would always say: “Just little, just a little more.”
I jokingly remark that he says little twice to make a big one.

Yesterday I had to travel. With our trains you never know if you will get on time. I asked the conductor when the train was supposed to arrive and he said: “Do I look like a psychic?”

Now, that is a situation!

He is back, fussing around me again. I confide in him I wrote something new but he is not interested. I insist on reading it and mutely spit the doodling: “I fell badly today, and I realized �" it hurts.”

I ask him to come with me at an exhibition. I take him to different places to see things, but he resists and contradicts me. He tries to turn the swaddling smoke into a fog. I try to explain him that the loners are the most talkative people because they can’t stand the silence. He, however, grows older with every word I say I feel sad because he has forgotten how to laugh. My life has gone astray amongst old hearts, but I am still waiting for him to come back smiling, young and shining, like he was years ago when we met, because I love him.

Reviews

[A. Amos]

I truly enjoy the feel of this short story, simply brilliant...