by Cathy Leonard
A Rusty Nail- Scotch Whiskey and Drambuie
He hasn’t deleted all of her from the den…yet.
Her stained glass mosaic of a woman
holding the moon still leans against the window, her purple skirt caught
in the throes of flamenco.
But her Michelin France,
Eye Witness Top Ten Collection, Berlitz Budapest and Pocket Malta have been removed from the
corner book shelf and Dervla Murphy’s On
a Shoestring in Coory and Muddling
through Madagascar are precariously wedged between his Manual of Chess Victory and The
Secret of Tactical Chess. Hopefully Dervla’s survival instincts will
prevail.
The roll top of the desk beneath the book shelf no longer flutters
and clicks, expanding and contracting like an accordion. He prefers it left
open.
On the filing cabinet a stapler, a paper puncher and a calculator
have supplanted her tin box collection, Farrah’s Original Harrogate,Valroble
Extra Virgin, that used to waft out the aroma of nougat and olives and travel.
Her postcards of El Cordobes, bicycles arched over the
Herengracht, laundry strung from balconies on a Venetian canal, posted to
herself from European mini-breaks, no longer bolster the second hand filing
cabinet’s gable wall- stripped back now to scratched metal and adhesive strips.
Her walking shoes and dog paraphernalia are no longer stacked in
the grate of the cast iron fireplace, flanked by art nouveau ceramic tiles,
deemed obsolete, ecologically endangering, and currently on auction on E-bay.
And the sky behind the mosaic woman-moon is cracked. The type of
slit that could slice the top off unsuspecting flesh and it’s a question of how
long… before he decides that a brazen woman is the last thing he needs in his
retirement.
Does she mind him being home all day?
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