The Nail

Once when I was walking, I came upon a rusty nail. The kind you find at an old forgotten scrap yard. It is orange with rust. Layers of the stuff; telling of years of neglect. It is bent and old and somehow shriveled with the hammering and beating of time past. It lays there amongst others of it's kind in a heap of dirt, suffocated by the crowd.

The nail has had its day. It held buildings together. It used to be important. If that one nail was removed, the structure tumbled. Now, decades later, crippled by disuse, it is stifled by the rust.

I put it in my pocket and continue on my way, but reflecting on the scrap piece of metal. My fingers working absent-mindedly as I wonder what it would take for that nail to be made new.

It must have been an hour or more that my thoughts meandered. When I came to, the sun was a dying ember, it's rusty coloring diffusing the air around me. I hold the nail in the palm of my hand, it glints in the light. I cup it carefully, and at that moment notice that the rust and dirt are an inch thick under my fingernails.