Browning

Grant Hope #220

Sitting on a metal plate with old light bulbs that no longer turn on
in a room lined with fading dark green wallpaper sparkled with smudged pink blossoms
there sits an unclothed woman curled up and looking down at the floor
a white rose is beside her that is not as healthy anymore
and a silver key

Calling out to the miss
the scene is obfuscating and uncomfortably odd
all the diminutive details seem to mean something

She responds quietly that the key is the one to her heart
not literally but one that her lover made when he was still alive a short time ago
He used to sit in this corner and read stories aloud to keep her from the stress of life’s shroud
The rose was one from the rosebush they planted together

I told her the neighbors called us to check on her as they had never seen her inside for so long.
There was a desk with a book nearby, so I asked if I could read her a story from it. She said she’d like that.

The story on the desk was about a couple with the last name Browning. Two poets in love. They moved to a foreign country for her health, but the misses died some years later in her man’s arms. It was then I understood that the key to this woman’s heart was in the hands of someone who recently passed away, and she had held him in her arms that day.

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