so, yeah, it's almost a cliche with some of my friends, and of course in a way just by looking at me you'd probably figure that i like dead roses. but actually it isn't just because of my secret gothic past, or because i've read too much anne rice. it isn't connected to my fondness for black leather and clove cigarettes at all. there's a very specific story behind how i got into dead flowers.

well, it happened after i got beat up that time, back in the summer of '90, after that guy punched me an unspecified number of times (i don't remember much about the actual attack) & fractured my jaw in three places. my coworker drove me to the hospital, and my dad met me there, and i tried to calm him down, tell him i was fine, listening to the doctor flirt with the nurses while i waited to be x-rayed. then we found out that i wasn't fine, and they sent me over to the surgeon's office, who tried fixing me up without major anesthesia, with some kind of less dangerous treatment. (wiring somebody's jaw shut is dangerous: if you vomit, and you can't get it out of your mouth, you can die.)

honestly i'm a bit hazy on the whole thing--surgery twice, in a dentist-type chair in a room with wallpaper, and neither time worked. then the hospital again--at this point i think it's the next day, or the day after that--and they do it again, in a hospital, full treatment this time, and serious anesthesia.

so, the first moment i actually remember? when i could sort of see again, and sort of think, i came to in a hospital room, the worried faces of my family, everthing white and too too clean, except for the single red-orange rose in a vase that my brother made my parents get for me. the only trace of color in all that white white room.

it was summer outside of that room, the universe was continuing, it was getting ready to be fall, but that room was air-tight and sterile. i spent a lot of time looking at that rose. it was open when i first saw it, and i watched it open further, watched petals fall, the scent and color change as it died. you might think that would be discouraging, but it wasn't. i was connected to the world, watching that rose. outside leaves were turning, and i couldn't see--birds were leaving, squirrels were dying on the highway with the frantic need to bury nuts for the winter. all of that was away from me, outside the hospital walls. but the rose was in there, with me.

when we got rid of the flowers from my father's funeral, me and my sister and my brother each got a yellow rose to dry. sometimes death is the only thing that connects you to life.

look around any place i live, any room or apartment, and you'll always find at least one dead rose.