Rose Heads

Bring me the rose heads
from last summer and let me feel the fibres
of their decay beneath my fingers;
brown confetti floats down and sits
on the surface of a puddle.

My thumb presses a thorn, skeleton
to skeleton, and here’s to flat champagne
and the petals you picked and scattered
like ashes in the flowerbeds — you still think
they follow the sun?

I liked the red roses best; an old cliché.
They grow like nettles between rocks, now,
and their heads float, decapitated as buds,
face-down

in the pond.
Where I left you
wanting an answer I couldn’t find
when it mattered, there grows
a daisy, breaking all the rules,
and I think I’ll let it grow.

 

/awfulpieceofdrivelyesIknow