Ashtray
written by: Julian Matthews
I am a cocked ear, perked up, ready to hear.
I am a gift from a friend long since dead – brassy, runty-legged, squat.
I am shaped like a shell, scalloped, though I have never smelled the sea, felt the sun on my face, sand between my toes, been lulled by ocean waves.
My role is limited to listening to your salty tongue (and holding my own), dousing your embers with a thousand crushes, bearing your powdery residue, holding space for the greyness of your daily grind.
I am your steady, your corner-warmer, the torch-bearer of your only remaining vice.
I am the snuffer of others’ unfulfilled expectations of you, the unrealized potential of smouldered dreams, the ifs and buts of charred regrets.
I hear you speak of moonshots, presidents, and assassinations like you did in the 60s.
News and politics are your bread and butter; all spit, spark, and fire.
But time has staled arguments, regurgitated the same bad blood, history repeating itself. I read your thoughts like a cavern echo: “Humans never learn, do they? Humans never learn, humans never…”
You are still angry, seething beneath the surface, your voice hoarser, your dry cough coarser like the last protester dispersing at the end of a rally, distant, fainter, yet no less convicted.
Your friends, fewer and fewer these days, seem less inclined to listen to your repeated protestations, the shenanigans of bad government, the hiss of your scratchy vinyl.
I can still feel your stress dissipate with every puff, every exhale a soothing relief, like souls departing in the wind.
I am the silent keeper of all your smushed secrets, the sorrys of forgiving, the hurts from never forgetting.
Today, we sit together – yet alone.
Nothing needs to be spoken, nothing exchanged, only the spiralling haze of smoke signals between ashy knolls.
Your rheumy eyes seem lost in a memory, perhaps of an old flame, that last embrace,
as you take a final deep drag, then push in – oh! familiar warmth.
I take you in, put out – oh! glorious afterglow!
And then, once again, we part, and I let you go.
- Ashtray - November 11, 2025
- Rotating Fan - July 28, 2025
- Toothpick - April 14, 2025
