My Talking Rose

My talking rose

When wakefulness knocked hard on my head, I realized that I had reached near an unknown garden. Right beside the gate was a lone tree precariously stretching its bare limbs as if to pick up any easy prey passing by and toss it into its lair. A black crow was perching on it. As soon as I flung the gate open, a teeny weenie voice from somewhere in my head shouted, "Stop! Take a step forward and you are doomed!" But the voice was so tiny that I paid no heed to it. As I put my right foot forward, a sudden gush of adrenaline gush flooded through me but I didn't have to drag my left foot, it simply followed my other foot which was leading it. I realized I wasn't walking rather my legs were taking me further deeper into that garden.

It was winter so everything in the garden was yellow and brown. The old leaves crunched under my feet as I trotted forward. A red rose blooming in that unlikely hour caught my eyes. It wasn't a perfectly beautiful flower that we normally find in the season but in that peevish winter scene, that rose was the sole eye catcher. As I drew nearer to that rose that same tiny voice from my head reappeared like Aladdin's genie appearing from his magic lamp, "Don't! This rose doesn't belong to you!" Too late! My hands had already snapped it off from its frail twig. I put it in my pocket and sauntered out of the garden like I had never ventured into it.

Upon reaching home, I put that rose in a bottle filled with water and placed it on my bedside table. That night as I slipped into my bed I heard a sob and found the rose crying. I looked at it with tender care and before long the rose was telling me its tales of woe. I leaned on my pillow and held it with loving touch as it told me how it had always known that I would come for it and had waited for me. I was too mesmerized with the fact that the flower was talking that I didn't have time to think much about what it was talking and the most unusual thing that was happening in my life.

The next morning as I reached my workplace, everybody commented on my looks- they said I looked gaunt and pale. I attributed that to the winter season not knowing any reason to think of and scoffed at them for noticing things about me( for the first time). At night, the rose told me yet some other tales. Many such nights passed- sometimes the rose would sing songs of unrequited love, sometimes it cried with longing for love's blessed hand to touch it and there were times when the rose even sang of our blessed togetherness.

In the workplace, the people's eyes nearly came out of their sockets seeing how sick and wan I had become. Only thing was my nights were engaged by the rose and its antics and my wakeful hours were spent re-living all the tales it told me about. One night, I felt too feeble to climb on my bed to cast my pillow aside so I could lean on it to make myself comfortable for yet another story from the rose. I don't know whether I was hallucinating, but I found the rose come out of the bottle and sit on my pillow. I closed my eyes and in my sleepy state I felt as if I was putting my head on somebody's lap. I heard the rose say, "Come! Come to me! Come with me! I always knew you would come with me!"