Rose

Rose had a very big nose. She didn’t mind it much since it meant she could do her job well at the library, making sure hungry punters weren’t sneaking in food. The worst were those chomping crisps by the encyclopaedias, with salt and vinegar breath and prawn cocktail fingers.  If they were hungry, they could jolly well eat at the café next door, she thought to herself. She was, of course the queen of the library.

 Then, Rose bought the house of her dreams. A cosy maisonette in the Meadows, with stone walls and stiles, tulips and crocuses, and neighbours who were to each other, a different country.

 One day, as she walked down the lane in the Meadows, her nose twitched.

Was that rice burning or was that chutney?

Was that apple pie or had they baked brownies?

Why was there spice in the air?

Rose wanted to know.

It happened once. It happened twice

Walking home with roasted fowl scented air, sauerkraut and cheese. garlic and cumin

and something that smelt rather like liquorish

One day was plain and she heaved a sigh of relief

But the next day, the long lane through the Meadows smelt rather like fish.

Soon she was terrorised each night she came home.

For her nose grew as it twitched,

till she could no longer tell ghost scents from real

and as she stumbled over her toes.  

Rose used to have a very big nose, with a house in the Meadows.

She took a second mortgage and went away for a while and is no longer a queen at the library.

Photo by Tiffany Nguyen on Unsplash