Roses

This one rose,
dressed in a pink so pale it verges on gray, juts out
at an alarming angle from the vase
on my dining room table.
The remaining flowers stand proudly,
blooming their hues and fragrances
like women outside of a nightclub,
shifting their feet and laughing
moved towards the thumping, smoky recesses
by the momentum of their hope.
I tug the odd-angled one out, slowly,
careful not to budge the arrangement.
I see that its stem has been bent in two places.
Two dark elbows through which
water cannot travel.
I twist at the fibrous stalk,
no longer a conduit,
at one of the broken places. As I do,
two sets of leaves fall to the table, starved.
I am ministering to the life that remains.
Into a small glass jar filled with water
I put this rose,
with its three remaining inches of stem.
Where is the place in my house
that can host this delicate refugee?
I think of the way
my mother does this,
places flowers in small jars on the kitchen windowsill.
Somewhere in this forgettable sequence of events
I realize, in my body, the gravity of what it is to love.
To love
is to agree to tend,
to seek to restore,
to invite what is finished
into its rightful ending.
To love is to become a sentinel,
a quiet, awake guard
at the beloved’s heart-gate.
When it comes time to enter,
when the beloved lifts the veil
and permits passage,
the witness herself
must enter as an offering.
She must act
as dry wood acts upon meeting flame.
Grateful for the chance
to be consumed
and then to rise as glowing sparks against the vast sky
and finally to disappear.