Just A Dead Rose

I saw this lying on the ground outside a local community center. There was just the single long stemmed rose and a bunch of cigarette butts smoked clear down to the filters. I wondered if the rose was discarded or just accidently dropped there, and whether the cigarettes were smoked by the same person. Probably not, because there was not a trace of lipstick on the filters. Some mysteries we'll never solve.

The rose really wasn't in bad shape. A few minutes standing in water would have revived it nicely, and it wasn't even fully opened yet. It probably had left the florist shop earlier that same day. Seeing the rose made me think of Mary, and how much the gift of that single rose might have brightened her day. Mary isn't with us anymore yet too many things remind me of Mary. Taking her to the super market or her doctor, checking out a yard sale with her, stopping off for a donut and coffee, driving by the entrance to the trailer park where she last lived, seeing the little house, "five-eleven" she fondly called it after its street number, that she owned when I first met her many years ago, or the store across from city hall that had once been her antique shop. I left the rose where it was and drove home.