pondering roses
2022-06-02, 7:23 p.m.

I've always enjoyed pondering roses. In my grandmother's garden, the huge rose bush, like a centerpiece, climbing the exact middle of the garden, always drew my eye. My sister and I weren't allowed to pick it until it was ready. And we knew it's rightful place on the dining room table. The largest, most brilliant pink, our jewel.

And the magnolias raining petals in the spring. A nature spa. We played all day in the dirt and the flowers. Sometimes kittens. The mama cat let us play with her babies until the neighbor adopted the entire family. My first non fish pet was a black cat named smoke. I held him as he practiced climbing the tree i later fell from. A red maple that I hadn't realized was dried out. I fell in the brambles below as the neighborhood boys commented on my butt wedged in the fork of the branches. No sooner than their comments were uttered, the crackle of the breaking branch and my body hitting thorns in one fell swoop. They stopped as though their comments had cursed me and asked if the should come in and help. I laughed and jumped out of the thorns as if I was used to falling out of trees.

My hideout now destroyed, I returned to my pondering dew on roses

Years later when my mom visited me at school, we spent hours at home depot pondering purple rose bushes and deciding on mums, which of course i bought. mums for my mum