Shoebox

Curiously no shoes only a dance card from 1932 totally filled in by only 2 beaux who Tango'd & Pas a Doble'd her alternately all night waiting for her to choose one or the other (both brothers) . She choose the fair-haired one (for his sense of fun) the red-haired one (always so moody) never forgave her or his brother became a missionary in Trinidad & Tobago . A lock of baby's hair (still so perfect) bound tightly in pink ribbon lost after only a week of which they would never speak as the dried up tears like shrivelled mummified spiders resting now among a trove of birthday cards that declare the passing time gaudier year by year. Old love letters written in intense violet on almost see-through onion thin yellow paper. The shoes she remembers were a violent red chosen for the same shade red as her lipstick. A neat ticket for a Venetian vaporetto unused from 1962 with a telephone number scribbled in scrawl hurriedly across it. A beautiful button (a work of art in itself) from a favourite cloak left behind in a favourite pub as England win the World Cup made her look like Little Red Riding Hood or as her hubby put it: 'A fairy tale...sex on legs! ' A ginger tom (with one eye missing) sleeps on top of all this as if it were his own private berth in this ship of foolish things her box of things unaware that Virginia is dead.