It’s some hour of the day or night. I lie on my mattress in a matchbox-sized room with an orange wall, brown almirahs, and two windows. Yet still, it feels like there isn’t enough oxygen to get by. The door to the room is wide open, but I lie still, trying to find enough air in the stagnant space. I turn over somehow, and there it is—the altar of dead roses.
The once-bright, passionate red roses are withering and rotting away beneath the window. I sigh as the will to throw them out comes and goes, just like the will to escape this claustrophobic entrapment that barely qualifies as a room.
Tears escape my eyes, unwarranted. One part of me struggles to snap out of it, to push away the weight of two army tanks crushing and choking me. But another, more powerful part holds me hostage in pure fury. The weight of the pain crushes me as I struggle to move even an arm. Worst of all, I can’t tell where my own pain begins and the pain poured into me ends.
Blood slowly creeps down my forearm, jolting me back to reality. My memory betrays me as I notice a small, deep gash—just enough to pass off as a clumsy accident. Disgust ravages me as I take pride in how easy it will be to hide. Somehow, that gash makes it easier to pinpoint the pain, to locate the source of the darkness seeping through me. The bunch of dead roses glare at me, awaiting their funeral, ready to return to the soil that was once their home before they were cruelly displaced without consent.
I try to get up, but the pain shoots through me like molten lead.
As someone who has always been the SOS—the one who helps others get back on their feet, fighting through my own pain with a blatant god complex—the irony isn’t lost on me. I can’t even bring myself to get up and tend to my own wounds. The realization sends a disgusted laugh through my throat. I feel pity for the 26-year-old woman lying helpless, laughing maniacally. Before the pity turns to misery and anger, my brain saves me by pondering: how did I become the vase that holds this altar of dead roses? Why can’t I let go of the pain I take in for the ones I love and discard it?
As my brain searches for answers, my phone rings—once, twice...
I pick it up. The voice on the other end quivers.
Suddenly, the lead in my veins disappears, and I rise from the bed with the ease of a gazelle. I sigh and listen. As I move away, I light the candle at the Altar of Dead Roses. The water in the vase darkens, becoming a rotting concentration of foul memories. The roses beg me to throw them out. But instead, I walk away, leaving them to rot for just a little longer.
👏👏
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