I draw my hand back in surprise, blood dripping from my finger. The lovely flower I went to pick concealed a dark secret.
'Twas a rose--a most marvelous and perplexing flower. I see how it is adorned with crimson petals frilled like the regal dress of a queen. Its leaves are elegant, frail, and clothed in soothing green. How men and women alike long after its gracious beauty! Yet amongst its cloak of leaves and hypnotic petals lie a menacing stem of thorns. Almost like the teeth of a monster, they seem to reach out and bite any who dares pick them. I wonder why we have always loved the rose; for though it is seductive on the surface, it is stark and harsh underneath. We go to pluck one, and it rejects us as if we are mere beasts. Yet lovers cannot resist it, bundling it in colorful bouquets and embellishing their clothes with it. Why, pray, do we love the rose? Then, I think, why do we love? We buy gifts for one another, embrace one another, give our time for each other--only to one day lose it all in death, or worse, to lose it all to bitter fighting. To each other's faces, we love, but to each other's backs, we hate and bicker. We show affection and are rejected; we show kindness, but we get spite in return. Yet we do not cease to love because we must. The rose, in many ways, is just like this. It may hurt us, but we cannot turn away from it--so it is with love. Let us not turn aside from loving because of wounds; let us not replace affection with bitterness; let us not give up on one another when we fall. For, in time, if we shall carefully pick away all the thorns, only beauty shall remain.
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