They are the only ones who accompany me. I am the only one who cradles them. Twelve pale roses with spiky stems and petals soft like silk. Twelve who swim in cool water atop my dresser. Twelve wilting roses in the sunlight. From my bed, I gaze at them sadly, but my mother just shakes her head and tells me to throw them out.
Their nostalgia is secret. They send flashes into my brain. They droop and wither away and rip at my heart with their pointed thorns and bite my fingertips and never let me sleep. This is how they died.
Let one start to bend, they all begin to fall, each growing darker. Gone, gone, gone they scream when I can never sleep. They ache.
When I am too cold and too tired to pretend to be sleeping, when I am alone and missing so many things, then it is I look at roses. When there is no more sunlight in this dark bedroom. Twelve who grew into me like ivy. Twelve who held and never forgot to hold. Twelve whose fallen petals remind me.