The old man on the balcony across Ash keeps watch over our street, whose brief name spells out the powdery end of things. The public air transmits his days wirelessly to my open window: the undisciplined bark of his phone alarm the radio’s diffusion of weather and sports the entreaties of grey-suited heralds of God the greeting to an indifferent neighbour the wet choke of his cough the folding of his empty chair the sighing exhaustion of day’s end. As I listen, it seems I should be able to step out and walk on the thick summer air across Ash below to silently enter his flat, where I imagine seeing: an odalisque on black velvet a sink rimmed with amber rust car parts degreasing in a coffee can the carcass of a blind television the curling pages of last year’s calendar. I don’t know. Perhaps that is unfair. Perhaps his flat, like mine, is spare and airy, decorated with his daughter’s awards for films on climate change, refugees, the forthcoming vaccine, his radio always tuned to CBC One, as he listens and waits as I listen and wait for news of the annihilating fire.
Ash
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