A Potter's Field

Lying on the sun-dried grass, a rose sought comfort from the rough blades that coarsened her worn stem. Her delicate petals soaked blood-red and dug into the ground, dusted by the fine particles of dirt. Prickles laced her stalk as blood spiralled down her stem, settling itself like morning dew on the leaves that once nurtured her bloom.

Pain. She could still feel the abrupt slash of the sharpened pliers that scathed her skin. Uprooted in a sole swift motion, she found herself hostage in a death grip, tightly grasped between heavy hands dressed in toughened rubber gloves. She screamed in agony, her weak cries veiled by the soft chirps of spectating robins perched in windblown nests.

Pain. She had once felt loved, comfortable in the hands of a stranger that gently nursed her between his fingers. She was the symbol of love, the symbol of purity and passion—and that was enough to fill her throbbing heart with bliss that bandaged her blistered skin. Who’s affection and joy would she be a confession of? Would she be cradled in the tender strokes of an affluent woman whose lips were stained the color of her petals? A sudden yelp startled her from her thoughts, and she felt herself fall as a breeze brushed her leaves. She missed the warmth that radiated off the foreigner’s hands as her fragile form hugged the pavement once below her.

Pain. It was her prickles, wasn’t it? Did it hurt to hold her? Could the shades of crimson that grace her petals not suppress the inflamed stings on her possessor’s skin? It hurt her, for she knew she had harmed more than she conveyed the love she desired. Was it wrong for her to bask in the warmth of compassionate hands? Did no one realize the prickles had pierced her heart too? Tears had flown from the tips of her corolla down to her sepals, but her whimpers were muffled by the bustle of pedestrians shuffling across the gravel. An occasional glance was spared at her, but her sobs were mistaken for the mist that softened the dusk of the city’s sunset.

She had cried herself to sleep that evening, eventually waking to an unfamiliar scenery in the midst of parched and weathered grass discolored with her blood. Perhaps, this is when she realized—maybe, she wasn’t loved anymore.

---

Standing erect, the sun-kissed rock overlooked the arid field he called home. The scorched blades of grass tickled his die, but he had gotten used to their frolicking in the wind. As twilight shadowed the desiccated sward, he reminisced his days before the eventful gashing of his skin, courtesy of the calloused hands which refused to show mercy to the smooth sediments that formed his body. Once a young soul, he flaunted the constellation of scintillating minerals that speckled his skin to his acquaintances as they admired the gleam that crowned him with a faint halo. He took pride in the polished craters that dented the exterior of his soul, only for the fated hands to chisel the sides of his dome into a gothic headstone and sand the fingers that gleamed with rings of silver. The thought of the affliction stung him as much as the engravings on his body, but he reminded himself not to dwell in the past. He wished for the cool, brisk touch of a copper penny to nip his skin as a token of remembrance, but his bare forehead strung words of a eulogy void of reminiscence or commemoration.

Weeds blossomed in the fissures of his chest as he stared at the solemn rose before him, and their thorns embraced his heart as he took his final breath.

But such was life—or what was left of it—at a pauper’s grave, forgotten in a potter’s field.