she plucked the rose from the garden
crushed it under foot
ground its petals to the earth
without an afterthought

and, as pearls scattered hence,
they lay there in the dirt,
till gradually, in nature's course,
succumbed they to the hurt

for she was broken from her childhood,
something rotted inside,
and when she saw the whitest rose,
its beauty could not abide,

a rose as crystal alabaster,
as soft as nature's cheek,
as a prairie golden aster
of divine mystique

from that time she longed to cut it,
longed to cast it far aside,
so it too would rotten be,
'til, eventually, it died.