I have an old, brown carved box. The lid is broken and tied with a string. In it I keep little squares of paper, with hair inside, a little picture that hung over my brother's bed when we were children, and other things as small. In it I have a rose. Other women also have such boxes where they keep such items, but no one has my rose.
When my eyes become dim, and my heart grows faint, and my faith in women flickers, the scent of that dead rose, withered for twelve years, comes back to me. I know there will be spring, as surely as the birds know it when they see tiny, quivering green leaves above the snow. Spring cannot fail us.
There were other flowers in the box once. There were a bunch of white acacias that had been gathered by the strong hand of a man as we passed down a village street on a hot afternoon. It had rained, and the drops fell on us from the leaves of the acacia trees.
