The Writer and the Rose

   (To someone who never cared)

He was a man of ingenious words. She was a shy, delicate rose. She was filled with an impregnable admiration for all that was beautiful and brilliant. They were, hence, destined to meet.

Lust was his mistress. He looked at her with purple-tainted glasses and reveled in her beauty. Indeed an intricate marvel of Nature was she – an untainted, impeccable aura of innocence. Red burned in his eyes. His hands he stretched towards her…

She looked at his prosaic fingers, and at the masterpieces that they had penned. Reverence racked fire in her heart, her petals quivered in strange shyness.

He smiled, and his eyes changed their red, turning to a warmer brown of trust. She fell.

Once she was in his hands, he ran his fingers through her, each touch sending chills through her body. He clicked his tongue at the sheer softness and exquisiteness of her being. Saliva glistened on his tip and ran down her velvet body. She surmised it as Love. And she held him fast, her body gripping him with all the strength of her delicate structure, her thorns piercing his tough, hairy skin. Lust raged in his eyes, and red stretched its serpentine claws. He probed at her with the look of a victor. He held her tighter and one by one, shredded her petals.

 It was a blue, misty, moonless night when she woke. There was no her anymore, just a multitude of petals spread across the bed. A zephyr blew the petals off and buried them in the breast of an old diary. Cruelty had shorn her off her innocence, and blood made her redder than wine. She breathed fast; as the Angel of Death overcast his cold shadow over her… she closed her eyes and whispered a prayer:

                                                                                   And my love was but true

                                                                               My trust warmer than my being

                                                                                  My soul I had given to thee

                                                                                And henceforth I take it back.

                                                                             Just as I remain buried in my grave

                                                             So shall ye, asphyxiated in the dreary pages of life

                                                                                And memories shall henceforth cry,

                                                                                  And stain the white pages red.

Seven days later sharp, mumbled cries arose from the abode of the writer. The physician examined the life-less body with exactness of modern medical science and declared with a sigh, “Strange case of asphyxia!” However, no one could account for the pool of blood in which the body lay, for not a single scratch was discovered on his cold, hard frame.

If they paid attention, perhaps they could discover the rising vapor of a fading scent of the rose from his comatose finger-nails.