This is a bit problematic since if there ever was XML that'd contain only one <item> tag the structure would look different. With recent enough XML::Simple you can specify what tags to force to arrays$xml->XMLin("sample.xml",ForceArray => ['item']).

In case the XML starts to get bigger, it may be better to start using something different. XML::Twig or ... everyone guessed by now ... XML::Rules ;-)

use XML::Rules;

my $parser = XML::Rules->new(
 rules => [
  'description,title' => 'content',
  'item' => sub {
    print "$_[1]->{title}: $_[1]->{description}\n"
    return;
  },
  'inbox' => '',
 ],
);

$parser->parse('sample.xml');
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