Saccharine Posy

The whore’s glove lay beneath the park bench. The legless man picked it up and held it aloft, his hands shaking. The glove’s saccharine posy filled him with forbiddingness, a feeling of not being there but almost there. He remembered a toy gunboat he had as a child painted bright red and silver, the metal cold against his fingers, the colours so bright they reddened his eyes. He now understood the importance of the whore’s glove, its thingness. The glove was part of the toy gunboat, the part that moved it. The legless man (who went about without mittens) tucked the whore’s glove into his pant’s pocket and went about his way, his way about in the world.

On his way about the world he came across a woman walking a small dog, a man with one eye and a child playing hopscotch. He felt for the whore’s glove, and feeling its temper on the tips of fingers fell back into a quiet sadly mood. He stood astride the catacombs, feet troubling the fresh dirt piled in front of him. ‘I have a whore’s glove in my pant’s pocket’ he whispered. A child’s gunboat floated atop the pond in the middle of the park, a small boy tugging on a string attached to the prow, the boat railing this ways and that. The legless man passed without uttering a single word, his fingers caressing the whore’s glove, his eyes pointed slightly downward and to the left.