the store is full of roses
when the bleeding day approaches
but she ain't a rose
in her blue sundress
sticking out like a sore thumb
between the dying flowers
An Ode to the Girl Who I Could Never Write
She stood there with her blue sundress, catching the corner of my eye. I could not see her with a rose in her hand. She was not the rose type. I handed her a dried-out leaf on which I wrote poetic words, stochastically. It did not make sense at the moment, but she knew how to read between the lines, so that it made sense. She read sense into the strange words.
She ain't a rose, the words formed in the back of my mind, and I wrote them down on a piece of paper. I looked at her, the sundress girl, and I said the words in a slowed-down voice. Incantations to pull her soul from her body, to lure her into the trap of my words. A spell that captured her being, which I drenched myself in. I sang the words in a low voice, she ain't a rose, and in front of me, she began to dance, trance-like, taken away by the words.
And as swift as the movement began with the reverberations of my voice, she fell away into another world. She was gone. I stood alone, between the thousands of roses I did not want to buy, with a thorn in my tongue. She was gone.
She ain't a rose, I kept on singing, incanting, chanting, to no avail.
It is Valentine's day, and I did not buy her a rose but rather a bouquet of indigenous flowers. I mixed in some of the plants that grow in my own garden, adding the personal flavour one might expect from a poet who tries too hard. But she loved the gesture and she read the poetic words that a wrote on the leaves.
She ain't a rose kept playing in my mind as I picked up the flowers which stood out between all of the roses. Every girl gets a rose, but my rose got other flowers. Or so my mind kept telling myself.
I hope that you enjoy these photographs of a girl I could not write, the 37th instalment of this series!
She Ain's a Rose
Postscriptum, A Lost Flower
She was like a lost flower, searching for meaning in a world that consisted of roses with thorns. A cliche, but is this not to some extent our modern world? We have become deluded by our own makings, we worship those we hate and we hate those who could have been something better. We cast our gods from the thousands of likes and shares and hearts we give them, while they feed us with excrement and treat us like we are the problem. We have created roses with thorns and then we complain that we cannot handle the pain of being stung.
She remains a flower with soft petals and a stem vulnerable to being bent. She remains an odd one between the rows and rows of singular appearances. And still, I choose her.
I hope that you enjoyed this series of photographs of the girl I could not write. It has been the longest-running of my many series now. I cannot see the end in sight yet.
For now, happy photographing and keep well.
The musings and writings are my own, albeit inspired by the girl I could never write. The photographs are also my own, taken with my Nikon D300 and 50mm Nikkor lens.