The Fence

it was a big bastard project the first time I saw the house, the kind of dumb hope you buy when you still believe in forever.

the front fence—cast iron, 1940s, rising off brick columns like it owned the street. proud. solid. untouched by the rot that had claimed everything else. I made the rust my religion: chipping, scraping, wire-brushing hour after stinking hour, turning cancer-red metal into something clean, black, mean, and beautiful again.

the children were small then, running barefoot across the lawn like miracles, laughing at their old man hunched over the fence like a lunatic priest. the neighbourhood had already been gutted once—back in the war when the council came for the iron to kill Hitler and the dirty Japs. three doors down, posts were hacked off at the knees like broken teeth. mine they spared. too stubborn, maybe. I brought it back anyway, made it gleam like it did in ’43, before the bombs, before the bills, before marriage bled everything to ash.

then it all collapsed. not the fence—the life. wife gone. I walked out that day with a battered samsonite suitcase, three wheels still rolling, dragging it to the station like a man hauling his own coffin. no scene—just the click of the latch on my gate, my cast iron, and the quiet understanding that you can love something too hard and still lose it.

five years later I returned.

midsummer, air thick and forgiving. I stood in the shadows across the street, a voyeur in my own story, watching new owners finish what I started. perfect paint, flowers and majestic in ways I never managed. it hurt like hell, that fence shining without me, proud and complete. jealousy tastes like cheap whiskey and old blood. that year, I left a note under the door.

nothing dramatic, just goodbye.

I told the owner and the fence I was done creeping, done wanting what wasn’t mine. the children are all grown up now, distant polite strangers, and the memories fade like bad photographs. the iron doesn’t need me anymore. I turned and walked away for the last time, my imaginary suitcase still limping behind me, three wheels rattling like the last heartbeat of something that once mattered.

you build fences, fight the rust, think you’re protecting something precious, but in the end, the fence protects itself. you’re the one left outside, staring, wondering why you ever thought metal could hold a life together. it can’t. it just stands there after you’re gone—black, silent, complete.

divorce papers signed,
neon rain on empty road,
whiskey ghosts whisper