Short Story: The Poison of the Blue Rose
Author: Yasmin Marri
Blog: Personal Response to Selected Text
This is an inner-monologue spoken by, A’idah, a young lady who was forced into an arranged marriage although she was madly in love with another man. A’idah and her previous lover meet again after 8 years at a ball arranged by her current husband. What is to be read, are A’idah’s internal thoughts and feelings while gazing at the man she used to and is still in love with from afar.
(Quick note, the meaning of a blue rose is as follows: longing to attain the impossible.)
Unspoken words, glances induced by longing, and death insinuated by desire. To say I loved a man like you. To say I sacrificed a love like ours to later withhold a spectacle so detrimental to my heart. To that of which, was beholding you are your new wife, within the corridors of my tortured eyes.
For if only you had asked for my life. I would of happily submitted it to you as an offering. But you, you stole my pride. The only pride I had left to live with, in search for life. You stole my once upon a time. To what shall I now search for satisfaction within? To whom shall I cry to? My husband, a child-like boy inhibiting a man’s body? To that husband, I was forced to marry due to your silence? To that husband, who has never given me the status of a wife? To him I shall share my sorrows?! You are a fool, to think your silence was just.
You are a fool to believe that our love would stay as passionate as a hue of red, alike to that of the rose you had gifted me at my wedding alter. But you had failed to remember, that every rose wilts. That death is life’s gift to mankind. I too, like the rose, have spent my years wilting away on the platform of life you and I stood on. On that platform, of which, you had abandoned me, as though you were doing a service to my parents.
Time has so eloquently passed us by and yet my heart is still wandering through the platform of which you had bid me, your red rose, farewell. There is a poisonous venom in desire, that I’ve experienced while prancing through the depths of hope. Hope, that one day fate would you bring you back home. Little does one realize, that hope is just a way to find comfort in destructive realities, for if hope sincerely did exist, my parents would not have married me off nor would you have watched it happen silently.
Silence. Silence is what echoes through my mind and my soul on a daily basis, as if it is my only companion welcoming himself into my home of suffering and illusionary hope. Hope, that one day fate would bring you back home. However, that hope has only corrupted my beautiful red hue and turned me into a miserable blue. Perhaps, that is what desire does to an individual. Perhaps, that is what love does to an individual.
My love for you has turned me into a blue poisonous rose. And there you stand with your new wife, looking at me eye to eye, as though our once upon a time never truly did exist. Kill me, for what I long to attain is the impossible, I am just yet another poisoned blue rose.
