The roses you fear drape themselves like autumn shrugs.
They run up and down every gate within this town.
Every row around it,
Every bed beneath it.
They dart up around paper crosses.
They hang as uneasy reminders.
Traded and received, as symbols for the precious.
Locked lips retrieve this bitter collective.
And me, well I'd like to pour salt on your pallid ashes.
I'd like to press my lips to yours until blood vessels burst.
The thorns stay there as respected admonitions of this bittersweet parody.
A conjunction of the petal and the pricking seeves.
These roses you fear,
Attend ever right of passage.
Observe every sickle cell transplant.
Rehearse the night the car flipped.
Rewind the way the time slid.
Dragging the life from your bare body.
Smearing cake on the faces of the soon to be forever.
Never to be forgotten.
Every row around it,
Every bed beneath it.
Roses flood, like kudzu.

/close./