Roses and Blood

There are moments in each person’s life when you can feel yourself grow older. You gain a little piece of knowledge. In the constant war between holding onto your naivety, or grasping on to a deeper understanding, the balance is tipped slightly. One thing I am certain, perfection and pain are inextricably intertwined. This is no profound truth, at some point, each person will likely find the same. However, no one can really understand until they have found it for themselves, until they have bled for it.

For me, the most perfect things in life are like roses. You find those moments in your life, and you seize onto them, and hold them in your memory, knowing full well they will prick you. Although one’s ultimate wish would be to hold that moment forever, and not be pricked, ultimately something about our humanity makes it so that those moments are enhanced in a strange way by the pain of living it, or remembering it. Finding the perfect rose would not be quite the same without pouring out a little of your own blood for it. The happiness and pain together make up your life.

I remember the time I first had this sensation. It was mid-spring, and perhaps I was not in love, but at least at that time I first knew what love was, what it tasted like. I knew that she would never be mine even at the start, and yet somehow I didn’t care. I pursued the chance of having just a moment with her, something to hold onto. That moment indeed was perfection to me. I can still picture her exact smile, and hear her exact life as the flowers landed in her hair, and fell all around as the trees were losing their blossoms.

 It was one of those rare moments when life really seems to slow down somehow, as if that moment could last longer than it really can. Still, the moment is gone, and it was just that, a moment. I took the one moment, and held it in my heart. Maybe it wasn’t love, but at least I learned something about life, or about myself. I held that most perfect rose in my hand, and embraced the thorns that pierced my palms. I smiled to myself as I could see the blood drip down to the ground, the same color as the bloom. Somewhere inside, I am still bleeding from that day. I wouldn’t have it any other way.