Roses' Wounds

    It is 1871 on a stinging wintry afternoon and the grey sky above reflects the vulnerable girl’s state of mind. The drops of rain shower her tenderly, forming a harmonious solitary melody as it strikes the pastel pebbles on the ground. Ellen firmly holds a scarlet velvet textured rose in the palm of her worn hand. She runs her fingers across the silken roses’ petals that remind her of sweet and long forgotten memories. She raises the flower close to her pallid face, only allowing the tip of her rosy nose to touch the velvety soft petal. She shuts her teary eyes while embracing the fresh sent filling her lungs.
    “I did nothing!” she roars in grief, although there is no one around to hear her pained words. With uncontrollable anger, she unwittingly grasps the rose tighter in her hand, enduring the sharp thorns of the deceivingly innocuous rose that pierce Wher skin. Her wounded dry hands contort with pain, recapping her suffering moments that seemed to endure for eternity. Even the mist of rain that caresses her skin cannot sanitize the vulgar past.
    Ellen liberates the rose from her hand and places it upon the ruin of a grey grave. She examines the letters incised in the rough and degraded stone, which form the words ‘1871: Earle Roth’. She places her fragile hand upon the illusionary soul that remains beneath her.
    “They have taken it too far this time, it cost you your life and I said nothing, did nothing. I just crouched with fright and numbness”. She lifts her damp and swollen eyes in order to gaze at her surroundings. There are other graves under the vast stretch of bare trees, just like the grave she sat next to. However, she remarks a visible difference between hers and theirs. They narrate a different story. The flowers that have been placed upon them are tulips, violets and irises, flowers that do not embellish thorns.
    “Will you ever forgive me?” is the rhetorical question she poses as she hopelessly rocks back and forth waiting for a response. “Whether you do or do not, I desperately want you to know that I cherish you so. I wish I could have been as brave as you, as fearless as you, but I am not. Nevertheless, I do promise that although I might be obligated to go back to them and mask my emotion of remorse, I will have our revenge, even if it is only by telling a simple story”.
Several hours pass as she awaits a miracle. With mounting despair she notes nothing but the cries of ravens. She gradually allows two of her fingers to touch her bitter lips and presses them once more against the rough texture of the gravestone.
    “Rest in peace,” she murmurs, somehow hoping that the wind will carry her words to wherever it is that he residues. Ellen encloses her petite figure within her long black coat and conceals her hands with black lace gloves. She glances one last time at the red rose and the grave which beholds the human she so dreadfully lost. With the rain still slashing through the grey sky she picks up her umbrella and departs from the graveside, not knowing that in only five years her fresh and still young flesh will be lying next to his.