The Roses (for Karin) It was my first birthday gift to her— twelve Taj Mahal deep-red roses. I bought them at Kroger beside pineapples, tomatoes on the vine. She cut them underwater at an angle, filled the cobalt blue vase with plant food, water. They were as lovely and elegant as a crystal chandelier, and she set them in the dining room. On day seven she moved them to the mahogany dresser in our bedroom, and each night as she filled the vase with tepid water, I’d watch her smile before she’d close her eyes, then lower her face to smell them rose by rose. She placed them in the living room on the twelfth day. We expected to be picking up petals, rearranging stale, wilting flowers but almost as if were characters in a romance novel, our lives suspended in fiction, the roses had opened even more, fanning out in mouths of loveliness. ©Janice Krasselt Tatter