My Sweetest Rose

I once met a fully grown flower girl.

Not flower power, flower child, but a real desert rose.

Not gypsum and barite but the organic kind of flower that only grows once in a thousand years.

And I picked that flower. Didn’t water it, stepped on it on my way to the porch.

It still grew:

Wild and free – despite my chastise, but never in spite.

She said: come on boy, open the curtains – let in some light.

And for a moment, it was summer.

But winter came and I buried my rose in the dirty snow of the seasons.

And she grew rigid and cold in the hard pack of stomped-in-ice.

Many fires I lit to try and convince her:

I swear – if you just bloom, it’ll feel so nice.

But frostbitten as a January rose – her lip quivered in innocent fear.

And I tried to squeeze her tighter – G-d damnit, come here!

So I buzzed round that bud like a bee, greedy and selfish, and nothing a rose would need.

I flew far from the roost – hungry to be drunk, in search of a nectar as sweet.

And woe was me, so full of poison, a real killer bee.

How many times she took me back – on dirty and broken wings…

Yet each time, I asked:

What had happened to that summer – when the rose too had needed me?

But the universe knew better.

Three times three summers later – I was stung by bees.

Until finally; one day – I lie wounded in the street.

I thought only of her soft petals (those cheeks on my baby lamb).

I feared much: would my rose still give a damn?

What had I brought her, but the buzz of my song.

For I had robbed her of her sweetness. My my, I did her wrong.

And as I tried to fly for the final time – I realized: my sweetest rose had been there all along.