Flash Fiction: Roses and Memories by K. S. Moore.

She likes to sit right among the roses.  She doesn’t mind the thorns, doesn’t fear them. They are only part of a rose, just as human prickles and niggles are part of their skin.

Naturally, the petals draw her eye and her favour, like soft tissue, wrapped around a gift. The shade of pink is so light, she imagines its glide against her cheek, while the yellow is defiantly spring-like, late into the season. She would like a dress in that shade, made especially to fit, and it wouldn’t matter if her leg showed a trace of varicose vein, because everyone would be transfixed by the colour of the material.

She has brought her trowel, small and neat for that satisfying turn over of earth. Sometimes she spies a worm, like a sprawling, twisty limb. The worm is her friend and she leaves him be. If a bird wants to take him that’s nature’s way. She will not end his life.

She lifts her head, up through branches of over-linking trees, finds a patch of sky that is blue enough. Blue enough, to remind her to count her blessings on this still day, when her only company is the scent and sound of her garden and memories buzz at the edges of her mind.

Note: My parents have always kept roses in their garden and I did manage to hurt myself by touching one, as a child!  But their familiar pastel petals were, by contrast, a comfort to me.  I made dirty looking perfume with them and wondered why it didn’t smell gorgeous!  Roses are definitely entwined with many of my childhood memories and this piece of fiction reflects that.

Photo credit: Nick Kenrick. / Foter / CC BY-NC-SA