A garden filled with border roses

A mountainous man splattered red

He shivers, avoiding a blackened rose bush. 

 

Her skin blisters.

Black roses with wilted heads

Droop as a thousand thorns

Are born in her bed

 

Growing disjointed and painful

Their roots rip through her chest

Twisting her arms backwards

And groping her breast

 

Her hair is wild

Tangled with blackthorn

And nightshade berries

Which she swallows in the morn

 

From her lips bubble

Shrieks that taste of mercury

And pesticide;

No longer buried

 

The silver waterfalls

Cannot be cauterised; bloody

Showers in which the roses bathe

Their greedy roots swollen and muddy

 

Their prickly stems spiral

High up towards a grey clotted sky

They scrape at the walls and

Scratch the cement; doom nigh

 

They do not climb far

Her will is venom,

So their buds fester and decay

Shrivelling like loose denim

 

Ensnared by herself

She is destined to spend

A half-dead life in the rows

Of bushes, left to fend

 

For herself. But she

Does not give in,

She wilts enough so He

Does not come waltzing in.

 

Her own tears, own pain,

Fuel her resolution to stay

To be crushed the moment

Tentative leaves begin to resemble Monet

 

The stench of decay

Perfumes her weak stems

Discoloured chloroplasts

Paint her petal ends

 

Only ghost roses grow

White as her bones

Feasting on her tangible

Purgatory. Marked by stones

 

The colour of strained knuckles

Battering a door; the colour

Of electric shivers churning her

Bowels, as she cried for her mother

 

Riddled with soiled thoughts

And a bruised, decaying heart,

She curses His house and Him

For making her His; a part

 

Of His garden. His

Graveyard. His trophy

Cabinet medals, decorated

With ribbons; kept lonely.

 

He chose to cut off

Her fair, pretty head

To torture and ridicule her

Then leave her for dead

 

He chooses who to harvest,

Who to plant, who to keep,

Whose copper scented roots

To prise loose and make again weep

 

She will never let

His crimson stained hands

Close again; so she starves

Her brittle leaves — part of the plan

 

He leaves her alone

Hoping the rain will purify her

But she refuses to drink,

Malicious giggles a frothy slur

 

She rebukes sunlight

Hisses when bees hum by

Her petals are guarded though dead

Undesirable now — lips, breast, thigh

 

As her petals rust,

Blacker than oil, abundantly,

The broken jawbone beneath

Her roots laughs in bitter triumph.