Greenfinger by Daniel Key
I stick my longest finger in the sand and I rotate like the earth until around me sits a perfect circle, one large enough for me to curl into a little ball and wait the night out. I don’t think I’ll do that, though. There’s something I enjoy about standing.
You circle the circle and your teeth are so sharp I want to feel them. But when I reach out the tip of my middle finger is stolen and my arm zips back to me before I lose more.
Complacency kills.
How could I forget?
I bury the lesson in the sand feeling each coarse grain pressing against the bloody half-finger. I press it into the lost rocks like my father used to push the cigarette lighter back into the car, worried it would fall if he was gentle.
You keep circling, just watching me internalise my lesson. I wish you had something better to do. I wish you weren’t made for something like this.
Is there another life where you present flowers to all those in the sanctity of circles? A life in which you spend your time tending to the garden at the edge of the beach. That garden with walls of colour, that garden where all flowers grow and buds blossom and everything you touch flourishes. Those people are greenfingers, aren’t they? I smile. A greenfinger would be nice right now.
Its just one night. You’ll be back in your cage by the time the sun has risen. One night is not so long. One night alone in my circle. Well, I guess I’m not really alone with you here. You’ll just have to keep me company.
You’re so far away. Your eyes are so tarnished. When did they get so dim? Surely you weren’t born this way. Surely. Surely you were born brighter than this.
Surely you and me together are greenfingers in our garden. Surely we live hands and knees in the precious soil.
I drag my ruined finger across the sand. I look at you and you look at me and I drag the stub through the grains until the circle is sullied by a vagrant line.
You devour me without a wasted breath.
Daniel Key is from London, England. He has a MA in Creative Writing from Birkbeck, University of London. He writes a poem every day, even if it’s a bad one, but he most enjoys writing short stories. His work has appeared in the Meniscus Literary Journal, Quibble Lit and is forthcoming in mojo. He has won the Cygnature Story Prize.
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