The park benches keep their secrets well. What does the lovelorn know of those who have grown old together? Everyone is a stranger to each other and I am a stranger to them all. If I rested my head on the stolid stone, would I hear whispers and laughter that found pores to slip into and never leave? Would it splash cool comfort on my soul like the conch shells from a sea-shore do?

What would I know about comfort? I have always only hummed tunes that weep. Draped in a summer evening breeze, I sing songs of melancholy like that’s all it means. I stare right through the sight of children racing with their pinwheels. ‘I am just a tune, these words aren’t mine,’ the breeze tries to reason but I am not listening. I turn my face up and blow out another plume of smoke and watch it waft back to my face. White, amorphous and toxic. What would I know of comfort in this refuge?

If I were a vandal, I would scribble the names of all those I have sought refuge in. What names, though? I have only ever been good with stories, the names always fade away. The texture of a voice, the violence of a stare, the shoe size in the mud, I remember them all. I can’t tell who they belong to and it does not matter. What I have kept belongs to me.

Through the smokescreen, I stare at the house at the far end. How much of the house does the attic take, I wonder. I imagine an old man who hoards. Every year he knocks the house down and rebuilds it so it would have a bigger attic to stow things in. The first to make way is the bedroom. He starts sleeping on the couch, not always alone. The ones he lets in leave something behind every time. Then one day the kitchen disappears. He learns to eat out of cans. As the years pass, his attic outgrows his house and he finds himself sleeping on the cold earth outside his well-locked door. He is weak but possessed by a passion to guard his hearth. He had decided years ago that not a thing in there would ever be thrown out. So he grows old outside, forced out by those he allowed in for shelter.

The children have gone home for the night. Come evening and they will be back here. But how could I be so certain? I am out of smokes, sleep better not be elusive. My cheeks turn cold and numb from pressing against the stone bench. Would the story of my mistaken certainties slip into one of its pores as I sleep?

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