They called one another Comrade. They were married years and years and each trusted the other, through happiness and tears. They didn't care much about money, except when it served their causes. When young their causes were manifold. As they aged they honed in on two.....Renovate the brick apartments for others. To have and to hold (one more year).
They knew they would not have a year, which made them hold on tighter. The comrades' days were spent in labor and their work began to show. Their neighbors started a garden, Come one with a hose, another with a hoe, see our block returning! One by one, the apartments were done and people were proud to move in.
One ailing, one already grieving, the old comrades sat entwined in their favorite red leather chair. At dark they slept wrapped on the floor (while for a soft bed they were yearning).
When the one already grieving woke next to the one who no longer ailed, the grieving was made to cease too. Their neighbors missed their early rounds in the halls and garden rows, so they entered that unseen space. They found them there upon the red chair with funds for burial, and a note.
We no longer need this space or this chair, but we need your hands to fix them. Plan happily together, play music in the air, work hard (then sit here a spell), and remember what we wrote. Create a home for people with books and maybe even a child, the kind of people who might enjoy taming a garden that wants to be wild. Select them together and welcome them well; 'Be Peace' as they say in the ads. Remember that beauty lives in each of you, our dear brick apartment Comrades.
Written for
The Mag: Mag 145 that inspired with the above photo prompt
(source here).
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