Tools by Jon Beight

Your tools sit idle since you left. They hang, mute and sedentary, from the peg board hooks.

Most are a mystery to me.

I know what a hammer is, even though you always insisted that I didn’t know which end was the handle. I know what a screwdriver is too, but you were never convinced because I found that a bread knife worked just as well in a pinch.

After that, I am not so sure. There are small tools, heavy tools, oddly shaped tools, each selfishly guarding stories that will never be told again. They are coated with grime and splotches of rust. They bear the nicks and scars of use and are the time line of our years.

I visit them regularly. I run my fingers across them. I feel their coldness, their longevity, their uselessness, their cruel silence, your absence.

I resent them, yet I will never get rid of them.

© 2011 Jon Beight

Jon Beight lives and works in Western New York. He has been published in Red Fez and The Cynic Online Magazine.

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