Afternoon is fading fast, and the violet light that streams in from the open shutters makes my grandmother’s attic seem ethereal rather than cozy. Not that it makes any impression on me; my broom and I go waltzing airily around the room like a pair of intoxicated lovers, raising more dust that we’ve cleared. But that’s what little fun you can incite while cleaning out an attic, so take it or leave it. I, at least, am not one to leave opportunities like this behind.
It’s too dark to see anymore, and everything looks clean in twilight anyway, so I give my wooden partner a final twirl and dip. I lean out one of the windows, bashing him against the outside of the wall (what an ungrateful dance partner I am), and watch as great plumes of turbid dust motes are belched into the air. Averting my face from the worst of the cloud but it catches me anyway; I sneeze until I have to hold my head in place lest it blows off. I see, through watering eyes, the last red tears of sun being kissed away by the blue smile of twilight.
The new moon rays shaft into the neighbor’s back garden. It is a vast intricate affair of landscaping and hedge-carving, but my favorite part is the roses. They are the soul of the garden, fringing the towering iron fence and blocking the garden from any mortal eyes—save those of the birds that fly overhead, and anyone reckless enough to lean out so much from this attic window. In the garden’s very center, there is a small round stone table, empty for as long as I can remember, somewhat ugly in its nakedness. It is surrounded by a ring of the healthiest and reddest rosebushes. A couple times I’ve even seen the gardener—a son or hired hand?—swarthy, black, and silent.
I hate dust, I hate sneezing, but I’m not giving up the attic room to any other rival. It isn’t the layout and beauty of the garden alone that intrigues me so much. It is its loneliness. It’s fascinating, heartbreaking, chilling, like a discarded drug needle, like a torn and bleeding womb, like a revengeful inscription on a knife. In all my years, I have never seen anyone walk out of the house and into the garden. I sleep and work up here, a guardian angel of a handsome gardener who doesn’t even know I exist. He appears, he cleaves the earth open and thrusts things inside, and then he dodges behind a bush or a tree or a curve in the hedge.
And then, once again, he’s gone.
"Angreek87"
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