Friday, October 07, 2005

Nudglings from a Dollar Bill


"What is deservedly suffered must be borne with calmness,
but when the pain is unmerited, the grief is resistless."
-- Ovid

I hold the dollar bill in my calloused fingers. It is a rather new bill, and I can almost imagine it still smells of the treasury press.
I have had possession of precious few dollar bills these days, and I feel a sense of wonder at this one, brand-new in my hand, crisp. It brings to mind other things I had once enjoyed that were equally crisp.
Such as my shirts, once starched so heavily that I used to joke you could cut your fingers on their newly ironed edges. Or the air; crisp and cold outside my New England home, where my family and I used to live. The crisp way I once walked, full of confidence, my future ahead of me.
Before the fire.
Before all that I knew became so beyond crisp that it lay in ash.
After that I had nothing left to hold as I mourned my grief to the screaming sky. Now, crisp is the scorched remains of everything I once loved. Crisp is my burnt skin, scarred and ugly. Crisp is my mind, unreliable at best.
I pocket the dollar, pushing it beyond the reach of my fingers into the depths of my jeans and turn my attention to the passing crowds waiting for more change. What is left of me is worn, tired and wilted … all used up.
Just as this dollar bill will soon be.