Spark and Flint

I don’t put faulty Zippo’s in the post for maintenance or repairs. Once damaged, they are kept in a small wooden box in my study. This reminds me of the trauma that each of them endured across the years; each bang and scrape and hurt. Like dropping them on isolated runways in Angola, or smashing them into low-bed trucks in Botswana. And that time when I rolled the Bedford on a desolate road on the outskirts of Oshakati, my Lucky Strikes still in my top pocket, crushed but smokable.

And then I light up and listen intently to the monotone drone of a dirty horsefly buzzing around the open gash on my damaged face, spark and flint from my Zippo relaxing me before the Air Force medics arrived.

“Light my lucky,” I said to myself.

just barely eighteen,
desperate for a cold pint,
pistol safety off.