The Last Valentine

A sultry Sunday afternoon at Shady Acres, unseasonably warm for February. Outside not a breath of air stirs. Heat, a shimmering wall, rises from a blacktopped circular drive. Sprinklers spray, and water sweeps in waves splashing on red-flowering bottlebrush shrubs that hummingbirds love so well. Inside are comfortable chairs and couches covered in cool Haitian cotton, area rugs with a Persian design in rose and beige, potted ficus and dwarf palms, and prints of quaking aspens and gardens artfully arranged on eggshell-tinted walls. In this tranquil, tasteful place where no one really wants to be, an old woman sits alone in a corner staring vacantly out a window, a smudged and faded valentine clasped tightly in her gnarled right hand, the words "Will you be…" barely legible after so many years. She sits where she sits every day, patiently waiting for something…or someone…she can't quite remember which. Perhaps it's the old man sitting alone in another corner of the same room staring out another window, trying to remember somewhere he was supposed to go, something he needed to do, someone he wanted to see. Author's note: Dear reader, this is not, of course, a poem...exactly...but, since it's far too short to qualify as a story, perhaps it can pass as a "vignette" for Valentine's Day.