A.V.N. Poneris

by A. V. N. Poneris

It never crossed his mind to buy fireworks. That was always something she took care of. So, there he was, alone on his balcony with an old lawn chair and a makeshift table made from an empty moving box barely big enough to hold an ashtray and his beer. Weary and unmotivated to settle into his new home—his new life—he stared blankly at the view from the third floor of the cheapest place available.

            Several fireworks displays appeared one by one, popping up over the treetops, lighting up the horizon—exposing only the upper half of each explosion. He pictured his daughters eating s’mores and celebrating with their mother and someone new. They were most likely dressed in the tacky red, white, and blue garb he bought with his last few dollars from Target before dropping them off. Sparklers were his youngest’s favorite, but he didn’t have any. He couldn’t remember a holiday where he wasn’t among family or friends.

            The condensation from the beer bottle soaked through the cardboard and began to bend the corner of the box, pulling and slanting it downward, threatening to collapse the entire structure. He caught the beer in time, but the ashtray tumbled in a flurry of smoke and ash, landing upside down on the untreated deck. He prayed his new neighbors weren’t on their balcony below, fearing they would be showered in cigarette ash—what a brilliant way to start his new life, he thought. As he cleaned up the box and tried to salvage it as best he could, he saw a label affixed to the side that said, “FIREWORKS”. It was the type of white label he liked to use when organizing the basement, and the black permanent marker was in his writing.

            As he inspected the box further, two pieces of steel wire fell out, surprisingly missing the giant gaps in the loosely boarded deck planks. It was two halves of a sparkler, no doubt broken from the move and left behind. He walked back inside and rifled through a box marked “GARAGE” looking for anything resembling tape. He managed to find a box of princess-branded Band-Aids and walked back out to the balcony. He mended the sparkler as best he could and decorated it with fairy princesses overlapping one another. From the right angle, it almost looked like Merida, Elsa, and Rapunzel were holding a magic wand. He imagined his youngest would be proud and lamented he couldn’t show her.

He lit another cigarette, and as the fireworks from across his vantage point drew to their finales, he was overcome with joy and solace that no matter what he went through, he would always be there for his daughters. He ignited the sparkler with the end of his cigarette, held it out at arm’s length to mirror the fireworks in the distance, and smiled for the first time in a while.