Why must beauty be gentle?
Soft, pure, pastel, and delicate…
Can I not be striking, spectacularly singular?
Purple and white, a brilliant streak of energy
Tearing the sky in two and bolting down the sides.
I want to be a blazing fire; an inferno that burns away,
Not into a temperate pool of gray haze and nothingness,
But into incandescent embers
And anxious tinder that awaits re-ignition.
Behold the rose I grasp in my hand.