She no longer weeps on the mornings after
the scent wraps its shawl round her shoulders and throat.
The scent of dark roses he sends to console her
for each of the evenings he’s touched someone else.
Gladly she gathers them from ribbon and cellophane
bare fingered clutching their sharp thorned stems.
Buries her face in their red velvet petals
so soft and so cruel on her pale jealous cheek.
Once many years ago, once when she loved him
defiantly she turned up her nose and refused.
She sent back the roses, the beautiful roses,
she sent them all back to the pain whence they came.
She sent back his roses; she hung up his phone calls
she stayed home and cried curled up like a bud
but he climbed to her bedroom with dozens of roses
he opened her petals till she trembled with love.
Fast as a summer storm, thunder and lightning
heat that explodes then a flushed empty morning.
A rose tinted sky and the scent of love fading
the scent of soft swift dying petals that fall..
She no longer weeps when he sends her his roses
she saddens though when the sweet petals lie dead.
The deep scented petals, their dark blush of passion
ephemerally wilting – she loves them instead.
