Fish and Ashes

Harun lit another cigarette. The smoke spiraled upward, a fragile thread connecting him to the sky—only to dissipate into nothingness. He watched it vanish, as though it were a metaphor he'd grown too weary to decipher. Beside him, the fish lay in cold resignation on their trays, their eyes wide and unblinking, reflecting a world they no longer inhabited.

Jamal sat on the wooden stool, his fingers fidgeting with the hem of his mustard-yellow shirt. His eyes were hollow but defiant. They stared  past the thinning crowds of the market. 

"Another day gone," Jamal muttered. His voice was barely audible, lost amidst the life moving indifferently around them.

Harun exhaled a slow stream of smoke. "Time does that, doesn’t it? Slips away, like fish through torn nets."

The words were hollow and tasteless. He leaned against the cold corrugated metal, feeling its rust press into his back a quiet, gnawing decay. It was fitting, he thought. Everything corroded in time: metal, fish, friendships, hope. The world did not decay spectacularly, like a flame consuming wood. 

A child screamed in the distance, a thin sound that made Jamal flinch. He wiped his forehead with the back of his hand.

"Do you ever think," Jamal began, his eyes fixed on the rows of dead fish, "that we’ve become like them?"

Harun flicked the cigarette  onto the ground and crushed it beneath his heel. "No. The fish were alive once."

The silence that followed was unbearable in its clarity. The world was a machine, gears grinding relentlessly forward, and they were caught within it, unessential and unnoticed. They sold the fish, but perhaps it was they who were truly on display—each transaction a dissection of their existence, each haggling customer another reminder of how little value they held.

A woman appeared before them, her gaze sharp, assessing the fish without acknowledging the men who sold them. Her face was expressionless, yet there was something oppressive in her scrutiny, 

"These are old," she said finally."We are all old," Harun replied softly, almost to himself.

The woman didn't hear, or pretended not to. She handed over a few coins and took the smallest fish. The transaction was made, and with it, a piece of their dignity was bartered away cheaply, inevitably.

Jamal’s hands trembled slightly as he pocketed the coins. "Another day," he whispered."Yes," Harun replied. "Another day less."

They sat there, the weight of existence pressing down on their shoulders. The smoke, the fish, the cold metal—all parts of a world that would continue long after they ceased to matter.And perhaps they had never mattered at all.