Gabrielle Bates

Rosification

By its head, it’s clearly dead
or almost. The blush the petals once were
drifts along the edge.
Maybe the rose wants to die,
and I am forcing it to stay with me.
I had a teacher once
who would say, if he read this, “A rose cannot want.”
Because I cut whatever
they told me to, they praised me,
teachers; my “lack of ego.”
Now my head is swollen,
heavy on its stem. I hold it between my hands
while I bend in place. Lately,
I’ve confined myself to a single room
and use my phone to look up etymologies. The word
“person” comes from a Latin phrase
that meant “false face.” My false face
is loosening; “we are two roses here”
is more and more how I think.
Meanwhile my friend across the country is thinking
about suicide. Just last night she wanted
to reminisce about the boys,
the ones who rifled their way to headlessness in the front
seat or jumped from the top of the parking deck.
There were pills sticking to the swamp of her palm
when she typed I’m not going to take them.
We lie to each other all the time. What else
can we do? I bought this rose months ago.
That day, in my pocket, I had a poem
on which a teacher had written
“pathetic fallacy” in pink ink.
Two young women in love
sat close together at a table nearby
hands on the fabric
covering each other’s thighs.