Jack Conway

Fire Turns Things to Salt

White flowers grow wild in the empty lot 
next door to Junior‘s Variety Store. Some 
people say it's stayed that way too long. 
He dreamed he’d pass it all along to the 
next generation. Rumor is a burning cigarette
lit the bed on fire. The official version is faulty
electrical wires. It remains a tragic mystery. 
Everyone lost in that blaze. The house, gone, 
the foundation razed. He’s received a multitude
of seasoned platitudes but it remains an 
unreasonable reason just the same. He’s grown 
weary of trying to place the blame. It doesn’t 
matter who’s at fault. He doesn’t care. He 
wonders how anything could grow there in that 
corrupted field. It hardly matters. Looking back
he turns to salt. “Aren’t they beautiful,” she says, 
putting the white wild flowers in a vase 
on the table where her children wait.

© 2007 Jack Conway

The Wound of Being Never Heals

“The wound of being never heals,” he said, bowing his head in prayer
before the meal. No one dared say a word until Aunt Martha had the 
nerve to compliment the china plates and silverware. “What a lovely
setting. The forks and spoons and knives are superb,” she opined.
It only made him cry. He snatched them up and wiped them with his tie. 
On the 15th of July, 1965, Uncle George took his life, jumping 
off the Brooklyn Bridge, the pockets of his coat brimming with 
every piece of silverware they owned. A witness to the grim event
said Uncle George seemed intent. “He looked like someone was
chasing him the way he scaled the fence and dived.” 
Martha didn’t seem a bit surprised. “No one survives the wound of 
being. This infectious disease leads us to quarantine our rebellious 
heart and fill our lives with antiseptic remedies and cures that never work,” 
she philosophized. “Still, I wish he hadn’t taken all the forks and knives."


© 2007 Jack Conway

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