A Dozen Roses

I never liked roses. I never wanted them on my skin, never wanted them in my house. Red was my least favorite color until it turned into the one that followed me everywhere. Roses are toxic. They have thorns that don’t just prick—you walk away with your hands stained that deep, stubborn red everyone pretends is pretty.

In many ways my mind compares roses to scorpions. Scorpios to be exact…

You have to start with the thorns.

Everyone else only talks about petals and perfume, about how soft and mysterious they look in a vase. I saw the same things plenty of times—flowers pushed through concrete, stubborn and scraped, surviving where nothing else would. But none of those roses ever felt like mine. I’d met plenty that grew from grit; my rose felt like it’d been cut from diamonds and silver, polished and impossible. It was so beautiful that I stopped asking why something that perfect might be dangerous. That’s the trick: you look at the petals and fall in love with the idea of a rose. The real truth lives under the surface, in the parts that draw blood.

Okay — picture the prettiest room first: floor-to-ceiling windows, late-afternoon light pouring in golden and soft, walls painted the palest blush that makes everything feel like it’s breathing. A low velvet chaise sits by the glass, cream rug underfoot, a tall brass mirror angled to catch the light so it fractures into little warm shards across the room. There’s a quiet hum of a record—slow soul—somewhere, and the song oair smells faintly of citrus and old perfume. Now the rose: it’s the exact pink you’d want to tattoo on your ribs—soft as a secret but saturated enough to make you stare. Petals layered like silk, edges kissed with pearlescent sheen that catches the sun and looks almost molten. The center curls inward like a closed promise, and when it opens it spills color without shame. Its stem is impossibly straight, dark green as lacquer, flecked with silver like it grew in moonlight. Leaves are glossy, nervy, cut clean against the pink. But the thorns are what make it unforgettable: sharp, small, perfect as letter strokes, placed like punctuation where you’d reach without thinking. Up close they glitter—cold and precise—so pretty you almost mistake them for jewels. Touch it once and your skin remembers: a thin line of bright pain that doesn’t apologize but looks elegant doing it. The rose sits on a glass table in a vase of clear water, and every time the light hits the petals it promises tenderness while the thorns promise consequence. That mix—danger wrapped in beauty—is why you can’t stop looking. A rose so pretty, so petite you’d never expect it to bite. All soft pink and small and perfect, sitting there like it was made to be adored. No one warns you that something that delicate could still draw blood. But a sting does make sense… coming from a scorpion.

The personality of a Scorpio is honestly simple to breakdown. She moves like gravity — quiet pull, impossible focus. Intense enough to live three lifetimes in one night; jealous the way rain is jealous of the earth, secretive so you only get glints of her truth, and she files slights like tiny trophies. The room tilts when she walks in because she’s magnetic. Dangerous because she wants what she wants, and beautiful because she makes you feel chosen even while she keeps you guessing ——Are you still there? The garden got quiet all of a sudden. This rose has a habit of ghosting the people who actually care. I went months tending to this rose in MY garden. I got to watch this rose bloom, but under certain spotlights it would shy up. Imagine putting yourself out there and admitting to everyone you prefer this rose over all the tulips, daisies, and lavenders you’ve run into, just for this rose to wanna hide in the shade. So I did what any fool in love with their own flower would do: I called the whole garden to attention. I cleared my throat, pointed straight at her, and said, ‘This is the one. This is my favorite. This is the rose I choose.’ Funny thing about announcing your favorite in public, though— you don’t plan for the moment she pretends she doesn’t know your name. I went months tending to this rose in MY garden. This rose got to know me in private first—really know me. She learned my history, my fears, my shame, all the ways I’ve been broken and still chose to love.—But all it took was one weed putting a bug in her ear for her to decide I wasn’t good enough. Not because it was all false, but because she only listened to the parts that made me easier to throw away. Months of me breaking my back to make her happy, to be exactly what she said she wanted, couldn’t compete with the version of me that weed painted in her head. Her roots latched onto my mistake. My one mistake. Wrapped around it so tight you’d think that was all I’d ever grown. She tasted that one bad seed and decided, ‘hmm, she fucking sucks,’ like the rest of me didn’t exist. When tending to my roses, I tend with love. I came into this garden with my hands already open, palms up, heart stupid full of compassion. I watered everyone else for years, pouring myself into wilting stems and crooked leaves, never once stopping to ask if I loved myself in this garden at all. I made mistakes. I picked up bad habits. I had cruel things done to me that I swallowed whole and never spoke on, because staying silent kept me looking ‘perfect.’ Then one day I rose out of dirt and ashes, from burning weeds and scraping my name off the tombstones of my past. I finally cleared enough space to breathe—and that’s when I found her. This pretty little rose. So pretty it hurt. I was so pulled to her that she made me want to be the best version of myself. Because let’s face it: I am not a bad person. My heart is pure, but my decisions were poor. And a rose with poisonous thorns would never let someone like me live that down. Why see my side or believe my heart is pure when it’s easier to hold my worst decision like it’s my only one? In the end, that’s all that mattered: not the love, not the growth—just that I wasn’t perfect.

So I leave the garden in her hands. If she thinks she could’ve done better in my soil, let her walk my path barefoot. Let her stand where I stood, with a pure heart and poor decisions, and feel what it’s like to be sentenced over a past she never lived. Let the rose feel how heavy it is to love something that will never love you back. I loved her. That’s the part that never seems to matter until it’s the rose doing the bleeding. If ever the weight gets too heavy, if ever she misses the sound of my voice, the rose could always come back to me, because I will wait for her. I’ve lost interest in other flowers and I think about the rose every day. I’ve been offered a dozen roses, still never once so pretty. My apologies to the dozen roses.