Short story: You Always Hurt the One You Love

You Always Hurt the One You Love

She loved yellow roses. Of course they had to have a perfect scent as well as perfect petals, perfect shape, perfect leaves and perfect stems. This rose, growing serenely in her garden was such a rose, perfect in its magnificence.

She knew it would not last in its perfection for long. Others growing on the same bush would follow; they were already in bud. But would they be able to match this one? Was it indeed possible? This was the first to flower… a harbinger of a golden summer to come.

Having taken many photographs, she sat on the lawn gazing at its perfection, drinking in its scent. Suddenly, she was filled with a calmness impossible to describe: a kind of harmony with nature — no, with the Divine, a mutual possession. Her space was glowing with golden light, her senses totally immersed in sensuous pleasure. Rapture was the only word close enough to describe such an indescribable sensation of her senses. Her body and soul was possessed. Sight and scent were no longer enough. She moved forward, stretching out her hands to touch and embrace the object of her devotion; desiring only to be immersed totally and forever in its magnificence. She pulled the rose to her face, drinking in the scent, colour and velvet texture; gasping and groaning in mounting ecstasy. No longer able to contain the overpowering sensations, she was seized in a muscular spasm and crushed the perfect bloom.

Petals dripped from her fingers as tears formed in her eyes. Memories of a lost love flooded her brain. Her jealousy and overbearing passion had driven him away. 

“You always hurt the love you love, the one you shouldn’t hurt at all. You always take the sweetest rose and crush it till the petals fall.”

She fell on her face and wept uncontrollably.