The Key

This is a poem that reminds me much of One in a Million. Like the Mysterious Benedict Society, only those who seek will understand it's whole meaning. Clues, like keys, are left in this poem. You must find them all if you are to unlock this woman's heart.

The Key

Golden

In the lazy

Afternoon

Light, it dangles

Enigmatically

From the man’s hand-

Tanned, speckled

With little hyperpigmentation stars-

Moving quickly, little

Excited movements.

The woman watches the key,

Curious, anticipating,

Then darts her eyes back

To the man’s face, quickly

As if she were afraid of missing

The boyish, thrilled expression

Written there on the strong cheekbones

And wide, golden brow.

“A house, where we both may live,”

The woman captures the words

And hides them in her soul.

The woman is disappointed.

She hides this in a bright smile

Thoughts confined behind her eyes.

What was she expecting?

Not a mansion, of course. Of course not.

A tidy, two-floor residence

On a staid suburban street

Would be fine. Would be welcomed.

What was she expecting? Not

A cottage. A shabby, weed-filled fixer-upper

Of course.

The man does not see

Does not notice

[Because who would want to?]

His fiancé’s reservations.

He takes her boisterously by the hand

And leads her into the house.

She doesn’t approve

Of the cracked windows,

The mildewed carpet, and

Filmy whitewashed walls.

She can’t imagine

What they could promise.

But as her fiancé walks

From room to room, abounding

In praise, images leap

From the whitewashed walls-

As if transcribed

From his mind to hers.

She sees the two of them chatting

In a bright and cheerful kitchen,

Their children playing

On a Persian carpet, a

Four-poster bed in the

Cobwebbed master bedroom.

Then they are out again,

But before the peeling door

Closes

And after her fiancé strides away

And down

She sneaks a last look in.

The walls are as empty and as cold

As when they first arrived.

Now the woman lifts

Her left hand, drearily

In front of her face.

From the ring finger dangles

A key, bronze

In the faint fluorescent light

Leaking from the next-door apartment.

She remembers, foggily

How it glinted when it was thrown

Forcefully, angrily

At her. Thunking against her chest,

Slicing her heart in two.

On a whim, on a desperate hope

The woman grabs the key,

Totters up from her unwashed sheets

Staggers out the door

Falls crookedly into her car

Grasps the steering wheel

With wobbling hands.

A corner, a stretch

Of blindsided time-

A turn, two turns,

The car parks before

A falling-down, weed-crowded

Fixer-upper cottage.

She runs, purposefully now

To the door, inserts the key

And turns it forcibly.

She steps tentative into the house,

Ghostly in the night.

She runs her hand along the wall,

But no images leap

From his mind to hers-

Her heart has been severed, disconnected

From his.

She is alone in the house,

Moonlight falling like tears

Upon her bowed shoulders.