Pandora’s Box

I step inside a second-hand store in downtown Athens. A musty odor envelops me. A yellow handbag, by the entrance, has pride of place. Plastic dolls of varying sizes, unclothed but for the price tag, line a shelf. Rows of scaffed shoes, and shoes never worn, line the skirting board. Shirts, trousers, blouses, and skirts hang from circular rails. Moths dance in the sunlight. I run my hand across the clothes and continue to the back of the shop, to the books: Fiction, Poetry, Classics, Biography, Bibles. I duck to avoid a doll in military dress.
A glass-topped drawer catches my eye. Sparkling pair after pair of earrings: pearl, gemstone, silver, gold, diamond. I didn’t expect such quality.
The owner, dressed in a beige cotton tunic, approaches. “The Junta General’s wife,” she tells me. “After the trials she could not wear them. Brought them here. In all these years, nobody will touch them, although they come and look.”
A shadow of suspicion crosses her face. She looks me up and down, then relaxes. “Pity. She loved poetry,” she says, fanning herself.

bitter olives . . .
sound of a key turning
in the lock
.

In Haibun Today vol.9, 4, 2015