Matches, and Shoveling

art by Carl Svantje Hallbeck, 1856

by Maureen Sherbondy

Matches

My father collected matchbooks under a glass table. He wanted visitors to know all the restaurants he’d been to. But no one ever stepped foot in his apartment but us four kids. There were no beds. He kept us on surfaces with no covers. We were his display items just like the restaurant names on paper. I wanted to sleep beside the matchbooks and pretend I was visiting New York restaurants. Once he took us to Cape May for a few days. We stood on a balcony and watched the ocean, but I don’t recall ever touching the ocean. It was all for a family photo he could show to no one. Sometimes I wonder where those matchbooks went after he died. Such a shame that we didn’t light a big fire and burn them along with those memories.

Shoveling

My father shovels snow from our driveway; it is always winter now. I shout, We don’t live here. But he doesn’t stop removing snow. It’s January in central Jersey. I like to have a purpose, he yells back through the chilly wind. When he trudges over drifts, no prints appear. My movement forward reveals a small girl’s patent leather shoes. Put on some boots! he says. I spin around in confusion, floating between time’s varied continuum. When I blink, it’s thirty years later. I’m grasping a shovel in my own hands, tossing dirt and snow into a winter grave. What an inconvenient time to die, I mutter. Dirty slush falls onto the pine coffin. It’s winter in New Jersey and my father is dead.

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