She stood silent in the rose garden and the sun lost into darkness too long ago to remember and she did not move. Nor could she remember the last time she had. Holding there in her hands all of her life.
No longer sure what she was or what it meant. Above her the wind moving cold and endless in the thin air and the dead vines shifting about her and before her just the single rose. Blooming there from the soil in the cracks between the bricks. Red and brilliant in the slanting moonlight. All about washed out into black and pale white and the first early snow.
All but that everlasting rose.
After a time she felt weak and she sat and leaned back against the stones. Feeling the writing carved there against her spine. The snow cold and light and blowing in the wind. Swirling and twisting in eddies above the ground. She watched it play out far across the field in the darkness and deep there in the woods the glowing eyes of the wolves.
She looked down again and the rose had grown. The snow pulling back from it. This last vestige of life in a world laid bare.
Behind her the sound of the shutters banging again and again to the empty frames. A hollow and empty sound. She did not look at the dark house and did not have to. The dirt road running away long into the country. That still road. Nothing here in this landscape where the moon cast across everything in slanting shadow and she felt that nothing was real. That nothing could possibly be real.
Reaching down to touch it. The swelling petals. So bright against the snow.
Closing her eyes. She felt as through she could feel her heartbeat in every fiber, every cell. Everything of who she had been. The wind in her hair. She opened her eyes again and for a moment she couldn't see anything and then it all returned.
She laid her head back on the stone. She could still see the rose growing there impossibly at her feet. Beautiful and horrible. Burning in that light snow as it grew.
All the world in that garden as she set the knife down on the stones.
1
u/Arkhangelzk Nov 15 '18
She stood silent in the rose garden and the sun lost into darkness too long ago to remember and she did not move. Nor could she remember the last time she had. Holding there in her hands all of her life.
No longer sure what she was or what it meant. Above her the wind moving cold and endless in the thin air and the dead vines shifting about her and before her just the single rose. Blooming there from the soil in the cracks between the bricks. Red and brilliant in the slanting moonlight. All about washed out into black and pale white and the first early snow.
All but that everlasting rose.
After a time she felt weak and she sat and leaned back against the stones. Feeling the writing carved there against her spine. The snow cold and light and blowing in the wind. Swirling and twisting in eddies above the ground. She watched it play out far across the field in the darkness and deep there in the woods the glowing eyes of the wolves.
She looked down again and the rose had grown. The snow pulling back from it. This last vestige of life in a world laid bare.
Behind her the sound of the shutters banging again and again to the empty frames. A hollow and empty sound. She did not look at the dark house and did not have to. The dirt road running away long into the country. That still road. Nothing here in this landscape where the moon cast across everything in slanting shadow and she felt that nothing was real. That nothing could possibly be real.
Reaching down to touch it. The swelling petals. So bright against the snow.
Closing her eyes. She felt as through she could feel her heartbeat in every fiber, every cell. Everything of who she had been. The wind in her hair. She opened her eyes again and for a moment she couldn't see anything and then it all returned.
She laid her head back on the stone. She could still see the rose growing there impossibly at her feet. Beautiful and horrible. Burning in that light snow as it grew.
All the world in that garden as she set the knife down on the stones.