Sonata With Some Furniture

Old hands with well-worn veins lit a cigar in 1948. It was a little cigar, kept in a box in a drawer of a dresser. Outside it was raining. Some time before, the hands were folded on the windowsill when they saw a dresser in the street. Some time after, the hands were holding, lifting, setting the dresser down by the open window. Then, that cigar, kept in a box in a drawer of the dresser. The hands reached, held, rolled it across the palm. Once to the lips and down again. Tossed around here and there, every finger got a touch. Now again to the lips and held between.

A long time before, the hands had been laughing at something funny and chanced to see a chair in the street. They lifted, took, set it down in the kitchen, but, the legs were uneven. Into the cabinet, snatch the matches, set them under the left forward leg. There, that's alright.

The hands, now, outstretched, found the chair and leg with matches underneath. Holding them in hand, the hands poised one finger at the matchbook-end and pushed: bright red everywhere as the other end slides out. The left reaches in. The right watches on.

Pressed to the surface, the long silence before, the match is struck.