Your Love Is Like A Rose, Beautiful But Destructive

You want me to love you. As if it’s that easy. As if I can suddenly change the beating of my heart to be in rhythm with yours.

You write words to me. You know I’ll read them.
I trace over the syllables, trying to understand a mind I’ll never fully know.

Love me, you plead. As if that’s all it takes for me to feel my hands sweat, my head spin, my body melt into yours in this summer heat.

You compare me to a flower.

I’ve always loved flowers. Their grandeur, their resilience, their beauty.
If I could be a flower, maybe I would. Something strong. Bold. Brilliant.

But the thing about flowers is that we uproot them for our own pleasures.
Pull them from their own wants, their own needs.

We take them from where they’re grounded, where they’re safe, where they have grown and made a life for themselves and place them in a pot on a shelf, in a cup of water merely glinting in the sun.

We take them and destroy them for our own selfish desires.

Call them beautiful.

But that’s not love.
And I’m not a flower.

I will not be taken from where I am, where I want to be, to decorate the sill of your bedroom window. I will not be labeled as ‘pretty’ in the last days before my leaves shrivel, before my petals fall, before my life runs out and you find someone else to use as decoration.

Love me, you say.
You want to uproot me.
You want to change me.

But I won’t let you.

Your love is just like the flower you want me to become. Something that looks pretty, for the time it lasts. Something to adorn your life, to make it beautiful. But kills me in the process.

Your love is like a rose.

Pleasing from afar.
Destructive to the touch.

And I won’t be destroyed.