19th Day - He came to me with a Rose

Reading time: 1 min

Photo by Meghan Schiereck on Unsplash

He came to me with a rose on our first date, and he’s got a rose for me right now, five years after his departure. I wish I brought Larry with me; I would have loved to show him how sweet and romantic his dad is; even now, even here.

He came to me with a rose tucked behind his ear on our first date. I asked how he could bear the pain of prickles puncturing his skin, but he’d removed them one by one, just to protect me from that beauty.

On the day of our first date, he gave me a rose with bleeding fingers.

And now it’s the same. I come to him because he can’t move, but he’s got a rose for me. It’s red and lively, grown out of his eye socket as if it was a clean, bone-like vase. He hasn’t removed the prickles this time; his hands and arms buried somewhere along these scarred hills, but he still protects me, and his son, from the evil and the beauty alike.

I pick up the rose. A fat, slow drop of blood flees from my finger and splashes on his skull. It gives him colour, as if he was blushing, as if this was again our first date, and he came to me with a rose.

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