Dan Cardoza writes

The Rose Bandit             

I watch her as she strolls up the walk, just in front of my neighbor’s yard, directly across the street. I have a perfect view from my kitchen window. As I wash my sauté pan I just used to cook two guilt-ridden eggs in. With butter thank you. She now ambles, very deliberately in front of the roses, stands quietly stares at the first of eight of the most beautiful rose bushes known to humankind. 

The treasures are in a row, directly in front of a black wrought iron fence. She marvels at the Forever Youngs & contemplating their creamy mango hued beauty. Then she glides on to the White Willow Glen. Boring she thinks in her haste, carefully looking up & down the street. She imagines no one sees her. And then she is off to the next bouquet of roses. Ah, the Panache, yummy tangerine in color. She squints disapproval, too high-brow for her taste and budget she calculates. In her enjoyment and anonymity, she advances up the sidewalk. Wearing her glaucoma sized sunglasses, she thinks that make her invisible somehow. 

I notice something in her right hand, shiny and knife like. Her nostrils begin to dance to the smell of the Sonia Melliands wet pink in color. She then floats ethereal to the Simbas, as they bob in the July hot breeze. The Simba flirts in a nodding wink, bats her yellow eyeshadow eyes.

Ever slowly, she is on to the Renaissance Whites, shiny & fresh linen sweet; and then the Lady of Shallot roses, bathed in a blush of saffron and sizzle. Finally, she seems near the end of her clandestine mission. Hidden in plain sight, she comes to a full stop, directly in front of the Deep Secret Rosebush. The neighbor’s most treasured and cared for rose bush. She looks deeply into their window, once again. Now feeling safe, she looks my way once more, my smile still hidden. She proceeds with the skill of a gifted surgeon, using her scissors to snip the oxblood red rose from its long slender stem. She inhales and holds it close.

Rather than stealing on her way, she cannot help herself as she inhales, in measured pleasure, the scent of her stolen self-gift. She then enters a secret world. The perfume allures her to the threshold of her most profound childhood sadness. And then off to the smiling births of her children, to the end of her young loves. She sees her marriage ending in ruin, funerals of dear friends, and a future in which she envisions herself buried in red roses.

Startled by her own emotion, she exhales profoundly and continues her casual stroll. Up the sidewalk, she picks up the pace on her cat burglar, spindly legs; scissors in one hand, clutching her rose tightly in the other, as well as my stolen smile.