Etude in Black

The roses arrived at noon. I don’t recall the impact, only the machinery of its reception. Chrome shears dulled by tap water, the too-tall vase, a note of brutalist prose. This is how it always starts. With a feeling, yes, but more so the things I decorate the feeling with in order to engage in the ceremony.

This is not just a story I tell myself. It’s simply an excavated surface I have to tend to. Pruning a bush with the focus of a surgeon, making the essential cuts that angle at growth. Hours arranging a room like a calculation of chance. This is not just a ritual!

So I left the roses in the vase. I didn’t trim the stems. I didn’t change the water. I watched them mainline their own filth to a familiar, clouded end. How perverse, witnessing a thing so alive delight in its own consummation. Is letting them just be the most violent instruction? The now black petals, dutifully dropping onto the polished wood, are the only appropriate response.