Nobody knows what killed Rose. Oh, young, delicate Rose, her life snatched away from her at such an early age. Once a vibrant, intelligent woman with extraordinary potential and vest for life, now a cold, lifeless wilted flower laid comfortably for all to see in the open oak casket. The cream silk cushions cradled her stiff corpse. Her luminous eyes were peacefully closed, never to open again. She had grown from an impoverished child to an even poorer woman. Not a dying day went by where she didn’t feel the biting pangs of hunger or hear the monotonous but all too familiar ‘plap plap plap’ of a leaky roof. Rose had beheld her friends soar high above her in life, bounding through the clouds while she watched from the earth. Her dearest friends, Lily and Dahlia spread their petals out to the sun and their robust blooms screamed their successes. It was almost as if the soil below her roots was depleted before she had even arrived. Her bloom was merely budding when her last breath was stolen from her. She had always felt a bit peculiar. Lily had the purest white petals, so bright and luminescent that even the mighty sun shied away from her. Dahlia was a radiant pink, so dazzling that every woman she met wanted nothing more than to be her. But Rose was an impassioned crimson, burning the brightest of all. Not even the destructive flames of a raging wildfire quite compared to the boundless energy and youthful zeal she possessed. As brilliant as she was, men turned from her. Women clutched convulsively at their purses when she passed on the street, and placed their arms protectively around their children. It was as if a rose was nothing but piercing thorns to them. Even the great ladybug that defended them from the draining bite of the aphid glared. She knew herself better than anyone had. Every blooming flower possessed their immense beauty and joyous colors in fond hope of attracting a persevering bee or a fleeting bird to spread their precious pollen. The golden dust was the essence of life for the flowers. The essence stuck to the airy fur of the bees and the smooth feathers of the birds, then carried throughout the vast world around them. But Rose undoubtedly knew in her very soul that pollinating was no goal of hers. She envisioned opening her blooms in the pleasant spring nights where perhaps a moth would keep her company instead of a bird or bee. What if she preferred the touch of someone who could not pollinate? What if that someone was a woman? Everyone she had known had told her such a thing was forbidden, but she did not agree. It was not Rose who had taken her. |