THE BRASS DOOR KNOB

Many hands have mauled me over the years. Many men and women have smiled at me and wiped my face. Couples have said goodbyes through kisses, sometimes gassing me by their embarrassment, sometimes smearing powder, rouge and lipstick on my golden crown. I have heard tales, legends, confessions, grunts, moans and screams.  But one day… One day I was wrenched out of my home and thrown into the wilderness.

She was inside and he was out. Through the solid wood they continued to shout.  

“Go away!” “Please” “It can’t be” “Please” He constantly pounded on the door sending the shocks of his heart beat through me. She stopped responding. “I promise. I mean it this time. Please…” Silence. “please….” Silence. “Please…” ….

With one final assault on the door he turned around and paced up and down a portion of the carpeted corridor for a few minutes.

…

She peeped out.

He ran to the door with a mind to force it open. But before he could reach it, she managed to slam it shut and turn the lock.

He rattled me, tugged at my neck. Squeezed and twisted me with all his strength. He strangled me with all his hurt, anger hatred and desire, trying to coerce me into cutting through the door and hurting it enough to make it give way.

He failed.

Instead I was sponge bathed in the sweat of his defeat, drowned and suffocated by the heat of his palms as I was pulled away from the door at rocket speed and thudded on the opposite wall, face first, couched by the flesh of his hand.

He raised me to the level of his eyes. They were green-brown. The vapor from his red skin condensed on his face. His nostrils flared with the rush of processed adrenaline being ejected from his body.

And slowly, his eyes solidified. The anger and pain changed into opacity. And he dropped me into his coat pocket and began to walk; a calm, measured swing in his step. He walked and walked. The warmth turned to coolness. Then an icy gale churned a whirlwind inside this pocket, stirring up the fluff and biscuit crumbs that lay trapped and slumbering at the bottom.

I could tell that he hadn’t washed this coat, probably ever. It was damp and smelled of sweaty socks. Mixed with the chill of the breeze, it brought out my brassy smell.

He walked on and on; through the crunch of dry leaves and the beat of the pavement, through the quietude of wet soil and the race of the grey and white clouds across the pure blue sea of nothingness above.

And then suddenly, after long and short minutes of our times, I slammed down and hit my head on something sharp and hard.

When the dizziness passed, I realized that he had sat down on a bench. Its wet metal bars began to steadily seep in through the dying fibers of the coat pocket. A mingled smell of flowers and freshly cut grass began to musically waft in. The stillness of the evening came and curled up inside me. Seconds passed.

Then he started swaying. He kept swaying to and fro, back and forth; rocking his guilt and despair to sleep in his heart so that he might bury it with excuses, justifications and consolations; constantly and periodically banging me on the loose rivet that shivered under the point where the coat pocket lay on the bench.  He sobbed and sniffed and cluttered the air with his desolation.

Oh, the stench in here! The suffocation! I shall rot and melt into the fluff that I lie on. When shall I be free from this dungeon? A thorny vine that has almost made it out through the space between the bars of the bench threatens to pierce the coat and stab me.

Soon.

Soon he held me gently and brought me to face his eyes again; eyes full of love and tears. He smelled me and kissed me and tied around my neck the thread that lay twirled over the finger of his other hand. And I had my first pendant. A picture of the man who had taken me when he lost his woman and her.

He held me down to the bench and made me watch as under the orange and violet of the twilight sky he scraped out a cup of mud from the ground. He lowered me into it. My eyes he could not see, but his I saw were ablaze with madness and desperation. He did not hear my screams.

He let the mud trickle down around me, kept his foot over the crown of my head for a few seconds. Then he left.

That is how I remained for what seemed like years; a lifetime. Shoes and slippers mauling me instead of palms, cotton and rings.

I have, since, smelled plastic and wood and rubber and stone. I have seen the world through polythene and dwelt among other queer and orphaned artefacts of the world in a small shoe box. I have smiled at the colors of gatherings through glass, in an apartment. And recently I have begun to silently tell my story to those students who choose to raise me to their wide eyes and calm noses in the writing classes run by my owner, so that they may make of it what they wish and retell as they deem fit.