Dead Roses and Empty Pages

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(Image via Jaycob Davis)

Jaycob Davis, Writer

Our stories are built on these empty pages. 

Meaningless rages over the ending. 

We grew gardens upon gardens, rows upon rows of roses that only kept growing after the story ended. Leaving beautiful petals on the ground as they shot through the ground. The rain continues to flow around like words on these pages, the raindrops have meaning but we never watched the rain without pain. The rain allowed our roses to prosper into a beautiful array of flowers. The pages continue to be empty with words you cannot see, words you refuse to see. Maybe that’s why we leave. 

When the pages are seemingly empty, we assume there is no need to stay, so we leave, but the roses push through the invisible ink on the pages and the things we held so proudly all fell apart into the dead roses that fell to the ground. We both grew the garden together, planted the seeds and we watched them grow through the sun and the rain, but we abandoned it over lies.

Over the cloudy skies. The pages had our stories, memories, and our promises. Only to be slammed shut for the only reason of the flowers began to wilt, our skin began to flame from the reasoning of blame. I wondered why we abandoned the garden and closed the gates, but now it’s too late to be wondering about the garden we left behind when there’s not much left to hide. The reason for the dead roses is not because I stopped caring, but because we stopped trying to find new ways to make the garden more colorful, we stopped trying to find new ways to prosper. We thought there was only one way when there were so many other ways to grow. To expand our ways, but we were stuck inside this one gated off area with no second thought to even escape outside the garden, explore new colors. You thought there was no reason to explore, so I followed your directions and stuck by your side through the toughest rain storms. In reality, though, we closed ourselves off to new pages, new flowers, and new ideas, nothing new was acceptable,it was one way and one way only when there were so many other ways we could have dealt with our issues. The garden only began to prosper once you left, the pages became visible to the world to see that I was more than just one garden, more than just one story, one book. We were one story and one garden because you wanted it that way but I am more. More than the pink and orange sunsets I adored and you said were average. I am more. So much more than you ever allowed me to think. Our book still sits on the shelves in my mind, they do not define me but they’re nice to look back and remember how boxed in we were. How much we have expanded our minds since that point in time. Since that time, I have made many stories with people I have come across, planted seeds to places I have been. The way I think now is much more different than the way we used to. 

Now I know that I am not you.