ROSE PETAL CONFESSIONS

These roses aren’t mine.

Still, I’m leaving the building with two dozen roses cradled carefully in my arm. Their weight is surprising, since I’ve never held this many flowers before, let alone roses with stems almost the length of my arm. Their petals start white in the middle, and slowly vein out to shades of pink that vary from pastel to something resembling mauve. It wasn’t the best choice in colour, but they’re still beautiful.

Something about the rose is captivating, but maybe that’s just the girl in me talking. This one little flower is enticing and beautiful and smooth and dangerous all at once. Morbid little freak that I am, I almost always keep the thorns long after the roses are wasted away and forgotten.

I walk past two prostitutes taking a smoke with their jackets done up, probably psyching themselves up for another night of what has to be hell. They both look at me and the roses, something like longing in their eyes. I have to wonder what they’re thinking. Maybe that I have a rich suitor, and he would lavish me in expensive gifts and excesses of love. Though really, in my mind, that wouldn’t be much better than what those women were doing every night. My love isn’t something that has to be bought; nor do I think it ever could be bought.

It has always amazed me how little I assume other people are like me. My love and affection and loyalty can’t be bought, but I seem to be compulsive to buy the same from those around me. “Oh, no, leave your wallet where it is. I’ll buy.” I can say it’s because I’m being the one in control. It’s best to pretend I’m not being desperate and sad and alone.

People holding two dozen roses can’t be any of those things.

Old doubts and uncertainties begin to inch out of your mind when you’re walking in the crisp night air with an armful of roses. You’ll walk with a straighter back and a more confident gait. Your eyes will meet people walking past you. And that’s really me walking past the Batistella loft development, not flinching away from the eyes of strangers. Not wishing I could at least be hiding behind my usual makeup, nor even regretting the lack of hair to cover my face.

It’s uplifting to realize your limitations are slipping away.

All the eyes passing me ask questions, radiate awe. Two dozen roses? Maybe she’s a diva, a wildly experimental diva, whose voice is just painfully perfect enough to earn her these roses, but she’s in a niche too obscure for her to afford anything other than the bus home. Walking in the dark night in the bad part of town in her John Lennon army jacket, with no fear slowing her down. This is a great woman.

Not a girl. Not even needing to be a grrl; in those rare moments when you really believe in yourself, there is no need for pretenses.

The roses aren’t mine, and I don’t think there will come an occasion when I’m walking down the street with my own, but what the watching eyes don’t know will only add to the mystique.

Nothing beats mystique.

After performing twice in one day, and being the only solo act in an extremely low budget family Christmas show, you get used to the compliments. The entire audience can talk to you if they want, and it’s all the same. “Oh, you were amazing.” “Your voice really is beautiful.” “Great job.” “Congratulations.”

It’s all well and good, but I’ve heard it. And the roses are my mother’s. The director of the whole affair, who was going off to an alcoholic celebration with her friends afterwards. I gladly offered to take them home so they wouldn’t wilt as she drank.

When even the perfectly beautiful girl who would stop at nothing to be a real country singer took me to the side to say how wonderful a job I did, I wanted to scream “why?” Don’t give me the hollow words! I want reasons. Give me reasons. Why did you like it? What did the song do to you? What did my voice do to you? Was it technical enough, was it too technical? Did the soul get lost somewhere in all the practice?

Give me reasons, or give me nothing.

Give me the whole truth, or just imply things; I don’t want noncommittal responses like “wow” and “good”. Anyone can say those and not mean them.

I would prefer a breathless look. Or a gushing response that I don’t think anyone in this day and age is capable of. We have critics to think for us and put these things into words; we can read them, and then not worry about our own true opinions.

As always, carrying these roses that aren’t mine, I’m a hypocrite.

I will want these things, but never dare ask for them, because I don’t know how to give them in return.

My boyfriend writes poetry that will take your breath away, rape your mind, leave you bleeding and gasping and needing more. His words are magic. They’re beyond human. And the best I can do when I read them is tell him I love them, I love him, and I can’t get enough of it.

I can’t give any of the whys that I demand myself.

I can only hope he understands I mean no condescension through it. I know that’s all I feel when people tell me how great I’m doing. Those words just seem not to mean anything anymore.

His poetry leaves me haunted and raw. The words flow so perfectly that they just wrap around my mind again and again until it’s bound; caught, trapped, unwilling to break away from the spell that has been wrought. And I’m afraid that if I did try to let out everything it does to me, I’d just sound stupid.

I’ve never understood poetry. That has to be the biggest reason why I could never write poetry. Me, the girl with two dozen roses in her arms, I have no concept of the art of verse. A grade 10 teacher tried to convince me that a poem about a man killing a rat in a super market was really about a pervert; a child killer and pedophile.

I just don’t understand imagery. Don’t understand metaphors. Don’t know what to look for. I work in impressions. Jagged images that only make half a work of art. My mind doesn’t know how to connect.

So I don’t always understand what he has to say, and that makes me ashamed of myself at the same time it make me worry that he’ll be hurt that I can’t see.

Even without the roses, I’m obsessed with myself.

It’s just that I’m usually obsessed with all that’s wrong.

I’m obsessed with keeping people out.

At a distance.

Then I’m all hurt when they respect that distance, and don’t take the time to realize that I really have led a life as hard as theirs. That I really do understand what it’s like to have that messed up family and have those frustrating friendships and to feel just that worthless. I know what it’s like when you think you aren’t feeling anymore, so you go to extremes to bring any sensation back.

This is me, two dozen roses in my arms, and I’m turning up onto fourth street. A car slows to watch me pass. They look concerned; probably saw that the hair in the back is still just growing in.

One of my mother’s guests at the show thought that I’d been fighting cancer; that the less-than-an-inch of red hair in the back hadn’t been a fashion choice. That was the one thing that night that really touched me. It was new, it showed thought, it was unexpected.

“You’re so good.”

“Keep on singing.”

“You made me cry.”

“Oh my god, is that girl alright, did she have cancer? It would be such a pity if she died.”

Sometimes I need to hear that.

Two dozen roses in my arms, though, and I’m on top of the world. Even smiling at the strangers as they pass, aware that the fact that I’m still in stage makeup that makes me look sluttier than I should be. Everything is conflicting. Shirley Temple curls in the front, only black. Short red hair in the back, separated and stiffened by gel. Girlish yet slutty stage makeup. Army jacket. Blue leopard print shirt. Black dress pants. Platform Mary Janes.

Do they pity me because I’m so conflicted?

I’m only showing you everything I am.

A performer, a rebel, a confused late teenage girl. At the same time, a woman with two dozen roses who could have gotten them anywhere.

They’re beautiful, really, and they make me start to forget.

The friends who haven’t called in too long. The ones I wish would never call again.

It helps to forget that I’m not sure which are which anymore.

Then it starts to erase the constant depression of the season. Not the Christmas season; the whole late fall thing. It agrees with me about as much as late spring, which is not at all.

In a few days, it will have been five and a half years since and old best friend killed himself. And of course, this woman holding roses knows nothing of the girl who learned of suicide when she was too young.

I can’t even remember who I was when I needed his memory to survive. With or without the roses, it’s a hollow ache that will not move, no matter what I do to it. Try to burn it out with the fire of love, or freeze it out with the ice of hatred, and it just sits there. This big hollow.

I know it’s a part of me that doesn’t exist anymore. An innocence that died with him, that I remember even less than I remember him. And there’s really not enough left of him to put even a tiny picture together. I’m left only being able to imagine what he was like.

The girl who died with him never would have carried two dozen roses, whether or not they were hers. She wouldn’t have gotten up onto that stage to sing to a crowd of people who’ve just heard every Jesus song in the book.

“Imagine there’s no heaven.”

She wouldn’t have gotten reactions from them that they couldn’t put into words beyond “wow” and “good” and other normalities like that.

“It’s easy if you try.”

I’ll have to ask John Lennon, when I pass on, what we’ve got if there’s no heaven. If the Christians are right and he’s wrong, he’ll be in a pretty toasty warm place right now. Of course, that’s where most of the greatest people from history will go. You don’t make an impact by being a perfect Christian. Even the Pope was once a mercenary.

I wonder if John Lennon ever walked down the street with two dozen roses. I wonder if he would have been shot if he’d had roses. Everyone likes roses. Maybe I should go down to Washington D.C. and offer George W. Bush my mother’s roses so I won’t have to meet John Lennon any sooner than necessary.

It’s getting colder out, and my thoughts are starting to resemble a Chuck Palahniuk book. I look down at my mother’s roses, which are fogging up their plastic as they perspire in protest to the chill. The poor thing will be burnt by the cold around the edges, but they’ll still be whole when I reach the house. And until then, I do have a lot more people to pass.

I want them to wonder why I have these roses. Maybe I even want some of them to ask me, but that’s breaking the mystique. I don’t want to have to tell them.

“They’re my mother’s. I’m taking them home for her.”

I don’t want to have to lie. Though it could be so awesome.

“I was given these for my amazing performance tonight.” And I’d stroke the golden ribbon around them. “I’m really quite good, you know. Amazing. Wow.” And no one can tell me why.

Somehow, I know I’ll be back to feeling hollow again the second the roses are cut and in their crystal vase, so I revel in the moment while I have it, watching for the reaction of everyone I pass.

I don’t want to have to go back to my normal life and mindset.

Truth to be told, those suck.

But for a while at least, I have two dozen roses to catch the eyes of everyone I pass.

remember the sound
that could wake the dead
but nobody woke up at all

rs

-majnu
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Timid thoughts be not afraid. I am a Poet.