Her red thorns show such fierce vigilance,
To protect her royal dominance,
When agony collides in cries of settled patience…
To the world she is comely, that masks her completely.
Through her pistils, she releases her monthly dark breach,
A secret weeping beneath the velvet leaf.
The womb of the bloom, untouched by the bee,
Sheds its crimson attire in silent decree.
Thirty days of a vivid, vintage grace,
Now yield to time in this cloistered place.
The hybrid queen, once a classic glow,
Feels the dark, ancestral currents flow.
Look how the red tints softly fade,
Like bleeding veins in a twilight shade.
Her stem grows heavy with the rage of age,
A quiet turning of a biological page.
She drops her youth in a scarlet stain,
An exquisite, solitary tax of pain.
Her whispers sound loud as the shadow falls,
And shifting petals answer the monthly calls.
The butterflies take notice of her grief,
And rest upon her crown to bring relief—
Soothed by the sorrow of a dying queen,
The loveliest ruin the garden has seen.
A month’s dark journey demonstrates her doom,
Yet still she smiles beneath the lunar room;
