Black Rose

You have darkness inside,

deep blackness kept within.

Your thorns grow all around you,

meeting kind love with a sharp warning.

You hide in marijuana steam,

losing yourself in melting lands.

You douse yourself in hard liquor,

to drown in stinging relief,

Black Rose.

Black Rose,

you are beautiful,

you are strong.

You sing the song of shooting stars,

a trail of solemn light erasing your past in grace.

You are incredible,

please believe this.

Such humbleness about you makes the moon weep,

such strength as you wield inside,

is the envy of supernovas.

Your quiet world,

as loud as it is,

shouts for all humanity:

“Grace! Grace!”

You are human, Black Rose,

you are human, not tainted.

You are human, not mistaken.

You are human and broken (but not beyond humanity);

You are human, most astounding.

I can’t imagine this world without you.

Would there be any grace without you?

High standards and golden streets were not made with love,

but you were.

Perfection and soft edges weren’t considered in affection,

but you ought to be.

If perfection was a thing,

dear loved one,

we would all be in trouble.

Oh, Black Rose,

do not look upon the red rose

or the white rose

with comparison in mind.

They are no more lovable than you are.

They are no more incredible than you are.

They are, in fact, quite bland

if you’d measure their full extent to yours.

You’ve carried this world on your shoulders,

seen things one should never have to,

been places which never should have owned you,

and yet you stand.

You’ve gained wisdom,

you’ve waged war,

you’ve learned to live and love like no other.

The little things make you smile,

and by heaven,

your smile is the most gorgeous of all smiles

when it comes from within your heart.

My love,

your “fucked up” is called humanity,

and that is what grace is there for,

that is what love exists for.

You deserve love just as much as you’ve been fooled that only everyone else does (indeed,

even more so).

In fact,

in the eyes of God, you are the one,

Black Rose,

which he picks from a field of all the white and all the red

and takes home to put in a vase to water with holy water and love

the way you’ve always needed.

He picks you, Black Rose,

he picks you to love, to seek, to find.

He searches in all the rows

through all the mountains and valleys and stretches of land across his green earth.

He passes by all the “ideal” roses,

all the flowers which stand pristine,

he walks right by;

for he loves you, Black Rose.

It is you whom he searches for.

He sees you and he loves you;

he chooses you, Black Rose.

Any who tell you otherwise

are a green rose,

who never gained any color,

due to their own selfish envy;

their own pride and hate.

Green roses have hearts of swamps,

and their lives are muddy quicksands.

Do not listen to the belittling of the green rose,

my dear,

for that green rose receives the fire of God,

and certainly,

you will be blessed far above such a rose.

Upon the day of judgement,

it will be the green rose banished from the pearl gates and damned;

and you,

oh Black Rose, with all your scars,

that he welcomes home.

Rest in his arms,

beautiful one,

for you are very loved.

And if you live in a field of green roses,

and all you’re told is that you will never, can never, should never be loved,

then know, that indeed

you are the most lovable and most loved (know this: even by God) of them all.

Seek your home

and find it,

for I can assure you,

home is searching for you, too.

And let me assure you,

there is plenty of grace and an abundance of love to wash over you,

flowing like a rushing river and deeper than the ocean,

waiting for you in your forever home

to heal every pain your heart has ever endured.

Run from the green roses, oh Black Rose;

do not run from Home.

(Excerpted from The Universe Inside Her II: a book of unsorted poetic letters. In progress.)