Roses in a Bedroom

Poetry | Mark Ward

after Patrick Hennessy

You brought them home the day after we moved:
salmon-coloured buds crowded by canvas-white
petals, some greenery peeking between. I changed
their water each day expecting a week, maybe two.

I’d find the petals in our bed, waiting
for our limbs to make a washing machine
of the sheets. I blushed with love imagining
you scattering them. They stuck to our skin.

A month and they were still vibrant, growing
it seemed, a trail of petals now inching
towards the bed. We didn’t question the mess,

we didn’t notice. Mornings full of their smell
until I could taste nothing else, filling
my throat, my lungs but by then it was too late.