Titanic || H.S.

A Blooming Rose

 It spreads itself in all directions, a rose, waiting to be left alone or plucked. It is a symbol of love nowadays, with the color red displayed for the purpose of fast beating hearts and amorous charm. It is given with the expectation of love in return, a fantasy that excites and worries, and always involves the heart. But they are harvested months in advance, blooming at a time when no one is focused on devotion but rather the return of the dead, and are shipped and delivered frozen in time for the celebrations of love. So, when you received four dozen roses the night of your twenty-second birthday instead of the birthday cake you had asked for, their presence angered you more than swooned.

It wasn't that you hated roses, but you hated how delayed they were. You would get to put them in water and watch them die without having them bloom in front of you. You hated not knowing their true moment of bliss, like it was stolen from you, and it only made it worse that they were from the man you were going to marry.

But in tough times, you must neglect those feelings of bitterness and simply imagine it blooming with you in the room - its petals rising upward and outward, showing you its most intimate portions and asking for water.

So, you clipped the ends of four dozen roses each day to see them stand content for a while longer.

But Harry absolutely adored roses.

They were tied in beauty with sunflowers, but roses somehow always came out on top. It was as if roses were the only flower that actually looked like a real flower. A flower that seemed to multiply in beauty as they were piled into bouquets, ordered with a small cake from his family's bakery, and a bottle of inexpensive wine.

A rose was a symbol of love nowadays, with the color red displayed for the purpose of shared hearts and physical expressions of adoration. A rose was given with a declaration of love, not with a plea of love in return, and they always involved the heart. But they were incredibly expensive, blooming with the assistance of new technology with hundreds of eyes on them making sure they did so correctly. So, when Harry could finally afford a bouquet of roses to give to his sister on her birthday, he never took anything for granted again.

In tough times, Harry would stare at the night stars and wonder of those souls who opted to skip heaven and instead shine their bright light for the lost souls of earth. And every so often he would see a shooting star, streaming across his vision momentarily, a soul that chose to rest instead of shine. He understood both sides - perhaps the resting souls were at peace with their business on earth and shot for the heavens, and perhaps the shining souls were protecting a loved one's light.

You were almost out of light, and Harry was full.

A blooming rose does not know of its own grace and delicacy, and although it is harvested to preserve its physical appearance for others to enjoy, a blooming rose is meant to prosper and live. And when it wilts, it fights to survive.