Okay! This is my first time submitting anything here and I'm a bit nervous... Ah well, here goes. This is a little something I just wrote for no particular reason. I don't think it quite fit in romance, so I'm putting it here. Enjoy, (hopefully), and tell me what you think. Harsh critique is appreciated.
The Garden of Thornless Roses
She reaches down and gently plucks a rose from the vine, twirling its young, oddly thornless stem between her fingers. It spins like a delicate lady in a music box; two petals detach, and are carried down to the ground by invisible hands. She steps forward and one is trapped beneath her heel. She crushes it.
Lifting the flower to her face and inhaling deeply, she gives me a coy smile, half hidden behind her light pink rose. Her eyes never leave my face.
“You know, I don’t think I can go on like this.”
“How? What do you mean?”
The flower topples from her fingers, landing forgotten on the cobblestones.
“I think…” She leans forward conspiratorially. I smell a fleeting whiff of spicy vanilla, no more than the ghost of a scent, lost in the heavy aroma of roses. I spot a particularly odorous one behind her back, its large red head glowering at me. “This isn’t going anywhere, Nathan. I think you know that.”
The roses seem to twine together behind me, blocking any route of escape. Now is the time when she will leave me, standing alone in the sprawling gardens with no company but her terrible roses.
“Honey. Sweetie.” She pauses, pondering how to say what I know she will say now. “You know we can’t take this anywhere if we stay here.” She spreads her arms wide as if to indicate not only her carefully regulated garden, her imposing mansion, but the whole world we live in. “They won’t let us.”
She is right, but I don’t want to acknowledge it. We do not make a suitable couple, my half of the duo especially.
“We have to leave.”
I don’t want to leave. I love life, where I fit like a puzzle piece into the background, perfectly snug. A dapper gentleman hidden in the tapestry of perfection.
Her innocent eyes peer at me, pleading. I don’t want to see pain in those pale blue pools. “Please?” she asks. “Don’t you love me enough?”
I want to stay, so badly, and yet another part of me is yearning for her. I make my decision.
“I’ll follow you to the ends of the earth, love.”
She smiles, and it breaks her face like the sunrise, turning coldness to unspeakable beauty. Her fingers twine in mine and I catch the scent of vanilla, sharp and much too strong, floating in the air around her.
I feel a final pang of loss and despair, piercing me in my lower belly like a spear, as we make our escape from the garden of thornless roses.
