The Rose Contemplations # 2 - Eastern Rose

You float dry in the small sea on my desk. My greed for your scent parches you, no matter how much water you get. Beheaded from that prickly body, your scent retreats into the water. If I drink it, perhaps I will taste you as you once were, but that is impossible, for I have taken you from your magic place, where the most extraordinary things grow knowingly out of a desert mirage.

You came from the Eastern fringes, that corner of my island that faces Mecca. There, your ruffled petals were like many whirling dervishes, dizzying me as I followed their contours in a never-ending flow. Your infinite swirling transfixed me, until I snapped the fingers of my intellect that said this wasn’t allowed. It was my tragedy, not yours. Other petals still swirl atop that bush, until the red fruit bulges out of the flowers like clowns’ noses, and the dervishes retreat into the memory of the roots.

You were unabashed magenta, defying the pastels of dust and stone. This could seem promiscuous, but flowers of the desert must flaunt themselves to survive. Chartreuse leaves covered in a barely-visible fur that kept vital fluids in and preying insects out, served as shade for the thick, grey stalks of a thousand hair-thin thorns. The roots had grown deeper than my spade could ever dig, and so I began to understand that you drank your magic from underground rivers.

The bumble bees lost their minds in your nectar. As they dug themselves into the heart of you, your scent intensified, overwhelming the air like incense. Even if I have the power to pick you, your intensity won’t stay in my hand, because you are like a prayer call that falls from the minaret.