Lighter.

On a deserted terrace – an anonymous place somewhere between the end of summer and the harbinger of winter, where plastic chairs silently bear witness to conversations that no one remembers – lies a lighter. Not just any lighter, but an almost empty, transparent, orange loner, carelessly left on the edge of a table weathered by the seasons. The object balances, literally and figuratively, between function and oblivion, between usefulness and redundancy, between still being able to do something and ultimately doing nothing.

Autumn has just begun – that vague period when the air already smells of fallen leaves, but the sun still shows its guilt – and the wind gently tugs at the tablecloth that no one smooths out anymore. The lighter, once an instrument of fire and therefore of action, of intention, now lies like a defeated pawn in an abandoned game that no one wants to resume. Its casing is torn, the metal cap charred black, and inside it only a wafer-thin layer of gas moves, waiting for a final spark, a final chance to be meaningful.

There is no one to see this. No smoker searching for his habit, no hand twisting and weighing the lighter, no reason to ask for another flame. And yet there it lies, an object clinging to its own definition, a small monument to everything that was once self-evident. Forgotten, yes, but not gone – for even forgotten objects know that disappearance is a slow process, a form of existential erosion that begins with going unnoticed.

The chairs around the table whisper in silence, the air rustles with the kind of melancholy that only objects can feel, and the lighter lies there – pointless, unnoticed, unwanted – and yet ready. If anyone were to take it, he would do it again. Without hesitation, without rancor. Simply because that’s what he once did. And maybe, just maybe, that’s enough.