300-Word Smoke Break

“I need a smoke. You got one I can bum off yeh?” Milly Liver draws that smoke through dirty lips and dry lips and tired lips that would rather clutch a bottle and clutch a glass and a fork full of pulled pork pride. The sun burns down but the shadow stays cold and Milly Liver flicks the ash to the dry, dry ground. Ash turns to air before it hits the sacred soil.

In a harbor of a hope and a shadow lined in sin and stink there lives a life in secret and a thought – passing thought of a life and living and something different and big-city nights and cold drinks and food with fancy names and no more stink and a stinking heap of toil and tears folded on the dry, dry ground of a dusty pea field. Pounding on her heart with folded fists, banging away and banging, banging, banging like a knocker with the screws going right through and no pig tail of a powdered wig on the backside, like the teacher told in school. Ghost of a knocker, and Milly Liver pounds hard upon the door, swinging, swinging her fists like dry and dusty hammers of a heaped up mound of flesh folded in a dry and dusty heap on the dry, dry ground. The harbor holds, and shifts, and fades. The harbor is gone.

Back to the dry, dusty pea field, and the ghosts of harbors give up diurnal visits, peripatetic horrors coming soft and quiet; going soft and quiet. The ghosts give up and abandon to a hope of a bottle or a glass or a fork full of pulled pork pride the dry, dirty, and tired lips drawing the smoke past the sacred soil.