Stone Rose

I gave my love a stone rose. It was cold and beautiful.

She planted the rose in a concrete lot
in a New York City slum.

My love was like the stone rose. Cool to touch, with a beauty that could not fade.

I would hold my love's hand and tell her how beautiful she was. She would smile and whisper in my ear, her voice spiced with secrets, grown in a garden behind her eyes.

We lived in the heart of Brooklyn, above a soul food diner. We could see the river from the rooftop. In the summertime, we would bask in the heat, smoking cigarettes, listening to Marvin Gaye, high in the friendly sky.

Sometimes my love would ask about the stone rose.

Did you find it in a pawnshop? Was it abandoned in a dark alley?

No. I sang a ten-story love song to a gypsy in Central Park. She began to cry and showed me her wares. She kept them in a burlap sack, tied to her back.

Why did she cry?

She had never heard such a beautiful song.

That's a lie. You can’t sing.

It's a story. Let me finish. She tried to offer me fools gold. I said no. She could read my palm and tell me when I was going to die. I declined. She showed me the rose. It was the best she could offer. She told me to give it to my lover. And so I did.

That's very sweet.

It's the truth.

I still don't believe you.

That's okay.

And my love would wrap herself in my arms. I would hold her close, telling her secrets from a world only I could see. A world beneath the city streets, where myth and legend run rampant, like wild things.

She would laugh and tell me about her dreams. She would whisper her secrets in my ear, offering me an elephant stone or the words to songs sung in heaven. I would smile and hold her closer still, her hair across my chest, like a dismantled angel wing.

A stone rose is unfading, unchanging. Just like my love.

So I gave my love a stone rose, cold to the touch and beautiful.