He watched her in her white dress on the way to church,
And to and from work
Chatting and laughing with her friends.
Each day before she got home he would lay a single red rose at her door,
Scurrying away as she walked around the corner,
Timing it perfectly so that her father wouldn’t find the secret flower instead.
Each time she’d lean down to pick up the rose,
Smiling with puzzlement,
And look around her, and each time he’d feel the urge to rise from the bushes and show himself.
Finally, one day before she turned the corner to her house,
He walked straight up to her and handed her the rose.
Her smile turned from recognition of the rose,
To a frowning bewilderment.
‘Why?’ she asked.
‘Because I love you’.
‘I’m sorry, I can’t accept these any more’.
Head lowered, she moved past him and closed the door firmly.
He ignored the hot trickle of his blood as he clutched the stem into his fist and stared after her.
Now that she knew him, at church she would see him out of the corner
Of her eye and look pointedly away.
His heart tore at his chest.
He wanted to go up to her,
To explain,
To talk to her,
But he was too scared of another rejection.
At night he hid in the bushes, ignoring the little ****** of the twigs, and watched her silhouette at her bedroom window, longing to climb through and confront her.
One night, as if she could sense his watching,
She came to the window and drew the blinds forcefully.
On the way back from work one day a small boy ran up to her and Handed her an envelope,
Then scurried away in embarrassment.
Smiling,
She took it from him and opened it.
Dried rose petals drifted to the ground
like desert scented snowflakes.
He watched as she turned pale and tore up the envelope so that the rose petals and paper alike blew away along the dusty streets.
The next night she found a pile of dried rose petals on her pillow.
Angrily she ****** them from the window,
Creating a furious red rain.
When she was changing the next day into her work clothes,
She found another rose folded into her clothes.
Heart pounding, she bolted her window before she left.
Now, to and from work, she kept her head down and glanced around her feverishly.
Days soon past and she received no roses, and it seemed that the mysterious man had vanished.
Now, the letters she received were from suitors and she kept them in a box at the end of her bed,
Tied with a ribbon.
On the day she came into her room glowing with a diamond shining On her left hand,
She found her room filled with bouquets of roses.
Confused, she asked her father who had put them there.
Someone knocked on the door.
The man that she had loved had been stabbed on the street in the Balmy evening,
And no one had seen who it was.
In his button hole had been a red rose.
The constable handed it to her; ‘I’m guessing this was for you’.
Then she collapsed.
The next day they found the body of an unknown male drowned in the river.
In his hand was clutched a white handkerchief embroidered with roses.
She sat in her room, looking in the mirror at her pale face and the eyes Absent of their usual glow.
Suddenly she saw his face in the mirror next to hers, and heart leaping She swung around.
There was no one there.
Turning back to the mirror she saw only her reflection,
But a red rose lay on the table in front of her.
That evening the body of a woman was found drowned in the river,
In the exact same place as the previous body had been found,
With roses in her hair.