A flower can break your heart.

From the first days of youthful introductions

packed tightly and passionately burning, 

each kiss a breath of white smoke

upon your grin of disbelief.

Once sampled, you’ll return again and again

swearing to never see another, that

the perfection you seek has been found.

And then, just like that,

she’ll disappear, gone, no more, 

like she never was.

 

None shall compare as you spend 

days, weeks, months, a lifetime 

yearning to see her again

but no one in town will know of her whereabouts;

she will exist only in rumor and remembrance,

and every impassioned kiss thereon

shall ring hollow and untrue.

You’ll long to smell her sweetness once more

and run your fingers upon her auburn hair, yet

knowing deep down that it was all a fool’s dream.

 

Until one day you’ll find her in another’s hands,

plucked before full bloom,

dried as if drawn across a desert,

scorched, mangled, scrawny, and frail,

a skeleton of the rose you once knew,

not the same girl you studied day and night.

Casually and callously she will be broken apart,

ground finely into crumbs and then dust,

passed around to be tasted by filthy lips

and you’ll shrivel with the simultaneous 

curiosity and disappointment and betrayal,

longing to get back to that time

when you first knew her, first felt her in your blood

first had that holy moment. 

You’ll wish you’d never met again.

 

A flower can break your heart.