The Pruning of the Rose
By: Joy Ortiz
A man and a woman
Planted a rose bush
On a day in late summer.
They put her in the ground
Behind a white-sided house
With red trim.
At her feet were sweeping lawns.
Above her stretched the branches
Of a split-hearted oak tree.
She could hear the babble
Of a nearby creek.
The summer sun was warm.
She was happy.
The man watered her with a garden hose.
The woman pulled the weeds.
They cared for her.
She put down roots.
Over time,
The couple began to drift apart.
When the man came
To water the rose bush,
His eyes looked empty.
When the woman pulled the weeds,
She wept, then
Dried her tears
Before anyone could see them.
Then she pulled more weeds.
The man came less and less.
The little rose bush
Grew thirsty.
Every time he returned,
She rejoiced,
Soaking up every drop
He bestowed upon her.
She looked for him.
She longed for him.
He did not come.
The little bush heard
Whispers around the yard
That the white-sided house
Was being sold.
One day the woman came
And dug up the rose bush,
Planting her in a plastic pot.
She carried the pot to her car,
And they drove away
From the rolling lawns,
Sparkling creek, and
Split-heart oak of home.
The car stopped at last
Before a yellow box house
With white plastic stairs.
The woman trudged up the stairs,
Carrying the rose in her pot,
And placed it on the deck
Of their new house.
"Little Rose," she said
With as much cheer as she could muster,
"Here is your new home."
The woman came every day
To weed the flower pot.
She pulled every weed
Until there were none.
She pruned the bush
With sharp snips
Of garden shears.
She clipped and cut
With an amateur's eye
Whatever looked dead
Or unhealthy.
The thorns pricked her fingers
As she collected the debris
And carried it to the burn pile.
The rose bush resented this cutting.
Who was this woman
To mangle and change her?
What right did she have
To take things away?
The cuts stung.
Sometimes on the weekend
The man would come back
And carry her to his new house to visit.
How she longed to stay
In his beautiful, sunny yard!
She pressed against the sides of her pot,
Wishing the man would plant her
In the ground once again,
But he never did.
When each weekend drew to a close,
He loaded her into the car
And drove her back
To the yellow box house,
To the plastic porch, and
To the pruning shears.
As she sat on the porch
And watched him drive away,
She hated the woman
In the yellow house.
This woman who shaped her,
Confined her,
Removed every remotely imperfect thing
From her life,
And kept her from the man
Through her claim to joint custody,
Was the enemy.
What can a rose bush do
To retaliate?
She refused to bloom
On the woman's sunny porch.
The rose withheld her sweetness
From the enemy.
She grew larger, sharper thorns.
She covered herself with them
So that every touch
Produced pain.
She refused to be a rose bush
For this woman.
She grew only thorns.
When she was with the man, however,
She bloomed.
Joyful and free in his presence,
She opened up all of her sweetness,
Delighting the senses of all who beheld her.
No one could see
The heavy thorns
Covered by all of her blooms.
For years she lived this dual life,
Growing thorns to wound the woman,
Growing blooms to win the man.
They were both part of her:
Sweetness and spite.
As time passed, the bush matured.
She outgrew her little pot,
And they transplanted her
Into a larger one.
Every year the new pot
Grew heavier
Than the year before.
She became harder to carry
Up and down the plastic stairs, so
The woman left the yellow box house
And moved her into town.
There the rose pot rested
Right next to the driveway
In the sunniest spot.
The woman planted
Marigolds, begonias, and a sunflower
To keep the rose bush company
In her new yard.
Still she refused to bloom.
The woman grew concerned.
She read books on cultivating roses.
She fertilized.
She watered.
She pruned.
She weeded.
She treated for pests.
She met with a master gardener
And showed him the rose bush.
She was desperate.
She had heard stories
Of how the rose had bloomed
For the man with the sunny yard.
Why would it not bloom for her?
She reached out her hands
And touched the thorny stems.
They pierced her.
The rose was glad.
As she looked at the spots of blood
On the woman's white hands,
She thought,
"Now she will send me back to him."
She was wrong.
The man, when he came to get her
For their next weekend visit,
Carried the rose pot in his arms.
She opened blossom after blossom,
Releasing all of her hidden sweetness
For him.
"I want to stay with you," she said.
"I hate living with the woman.
All she does is try to make me bloom.
You should see the things she does to me.
She won't accept me as I am.
She keeps trying to change me.
She is so stupid.
She even made herself bleed.
She won't leave me alone.
She doesn't understand me.
I just want to be with you."
"I don't blame you," said the man.
"That's why I left her.
But you can't stay here.
This garden is the wrong place
For a young rose like you.
You will do much better
In the soil of your native town.
To transplant you now
Might damage your roots.
Wait until you are older,
Hardier,
Then you can live
Wherever you want."
The rose was disappointed, but
She trusted the man.
When she returned home,
She resolved to do her best
To live well
While biding her time.
Down the street from her new home
Was a botanic garden
Filled with a wide variety of plants.
It was a place of education, show,
Society, and study.
The woman in the town house
Took her rose bush
To the skillful gardeners there
To see what she would become
Under their learned influence.
Also, the woman hoped
Her rose bush might bloom more
If she received the same water and sun
As other healthy, young plants.
Sure enough,
In the company of her peers,
Under the greenhouse glass
Of the botanic garden,
The rose bush began to bloom.
Yet every night
When she returned to the town house,
She closed her flowers tightly
And showed the woman
Only thorns.
Frustrated and desperate,
The woman cried,
"You are a rose bush!
Where are your blooms?
You were made for beauty and sweetness!
Why do you shut yourself away
And wound me with your thorns?
Don't you know
That I love you?
I planted you
In the garden of our lost home,
In the soil
Of our best life.
Your roots still live
In that same soil,
There, in your pot!
Can't you feel it?"
"Yes," spat the rose bush.
"Yes, I feel it,
Weighing me down,
Binding me fast,
Constricting and constraining me.
I once had acres
Where I could stretch my roots
Until you dug me up
And stuck me in this pot.
I can't wait to get out of here.
Once I am free,
I will find a place to plant myself
Where I can grow
And never touch this tainted soil again."
The woman was shocked by this venom.
"I have done everything in my power
To give you the life you deserve.
I have watered and weeded you,
Pruned and protected you,
Sheltered you from storms, and
Shared you with the man who left.
I have consulted experts in your care,
Taken you to master gardeners,
And glimpsed you blooming
In the company of your many friends.
Dearest rose,
Beloved daughter,
Bloom! Please, bloom for me!"
"I will not," said the rose.
Over the weeks and years,
The mother's plea continued:
"Bloom for me."
She whispered it.
She shouted it.
She choked it out through tears.
She hissed it through clenched teeth.
Lovingly, angrily, pleadingly,
Commandingly, softly, desperately,
Hopefully, prayerfully, constantly
Came those three words,
Over and over,
Until the rose thought she would go mad.
"Just leave me alone!" she cried.
The woman would not.
Finally, the rose,
Weary of her mother's pleas,
Resolved to cover herself
With artificial blossoms.
Every day,
When she returned home,
She carefully applied them.
They were very high quality
With soft, velvety petals,
Beautiful to behold,
Almost indistinguishable
From the real thing.
She finished off her guise
With a spritz of rose-scented perfume.
Beneath the fake flowers,
She clutched her real blooms tight
And hoped her disguise would work.
It did.
The woman was overjoyed
With the longed-for results.
She praised each exquisite blossom
And drank in the fragrance.
She was radiant with pride and joy.
Her rose bush was blooming for her
At last.
It was a lie, yet
A strange thing happened.
Beneath the warm glow
Of the mother's praise,
The tight, hidden buds
Began to loosen,
And slowly,
Without even the rose herself noticing,
Real fragrance began to unfurl,
Betraying her inner sweetness.
Under the cover
Of artificial flowers,
The rose began to bloom.
Then, tragedy struck.
The rose developed
A deformity.
She would need
Major surgery
To correct the defect
And allow her to resume
Healthy growth.
She was afraid.
She longed for the comfort
Of her father's sunny yard,
Yet she knew
She would be confined
To the house in town
While recovering from surgery.
Still she expected the man to visit
And console her
In her pain and isolation.
She had her surgery.
She went home.
He did not come.
Where was he?
She heard that he had come to town
And left again
Without even stopping by.
She was crushed.
Weeks passed,
Then months.
Confusion became hurt.
Hurt became resentment.
Resentment became bitterness.
Bitterness became thorns.
The next time she saw the man,
She did not bloom for him.
"Hello, stranger!" he said.
She greeted him with quiet hostility.
He felt the sharpness
And didn't like it,
But he ignored it
And pretended he felt
Nothing.
He busied himself
With other matters
And left her alone
Again.
Didn't he care?
Couldn't he see
That she was not the same?
Couldn't he feel
There was something wrong?
Didn't he wonder
Where her roses had gone?
She left
Sharper
And more bitter.
She tried to drown
The blight of rejection
With a certain risky fertilizer,
But soon she developed
Tell-tale green bumps in the centers
Of each of her blooms.
Her friends began to recognize
The unhealthy deformities
Of proliferation
And worry about her.
She began to avoid the company of roses,
Especially the sweetest.
They were only a painful reminder
Of who she had been,
Of who she had hoped she could become.
Instead,
She found a field of thorn bushes.
Next to them,
Her deformed roses were lovely.
Her thorns didn't drive them away.
They had thorns of their own.
She thought,
"This is where I belong.
This is who I am now."
She began to hate roses.
She especially loathed the artificial flowers
She wore for her mother.
"Why should I have to wear fake roses?
I am a thorn bush.
Why pretend anymore?"
In disgust and anger
She threw the blossoms
At her mother's feet.
"There!" she cried.
"There are your roses.
They are fake.
It was all a lie.
I am a thorn bush,
And you are a fool."
The woman grieved
As she clutched her beloved rose bush,
Piercing her hands on the thorns.
"No," she whispered.
"You are my rose bush still."
One day, the man grew tired
Of dealing with thorns.
He drove to the house in town
To confront his daughter.
He arrived with pruning shears in his hand
And matches in his pocket.
He had come to cut her down.
He showed no mercy.
"If you can produce nothing but thorns," he said,
"Then I need to cut you down to size."
When he was done,
All that was left
Of the poor potted rose
Was five inches of bare cane.
He left her a stump,
And he burned the rest of her to ashes.
As she watched the tangled,
Twisted branches burn,
She hated the man.
What right had he
To come back now
And suddenly decide to care?
She had given him the best of her.
He had neglected it,
Letting it turn,
Unnoticed,
Into a worthless wreck
That nobody would ever call beautiful.
Then, he had destroyed
Even that,
Leaving her with nothing.
He ruined her life.
It was all his fault.
As she huddled, naked and small
In the pot of home's old earth,
She felt a hand grasp her
And pull.
Up, up, up
She was lifted
Out of the pot
And into the air.
A strong arm shook her,
And clods of dirt fell like rain
As the old soil broke free from her roots.
"Do you know when it is best
To hard-prune a rose bush,
Little one?"
The question came from a man
In old boots
And faded jeans
With dirt-stained knees.
He was grasping her
In the calloused and scarred hand
Of a gardener
Who refuses to wear gloves
Because he loves the feeling
Of dirt on his hands.
His voice was kind, and
He was peering at her
With eyes that sparkled
Out of an open,
Sun-tanned face.
She was too stunned to reply.
"Well," he continued,
Answering his own question,
"You should hard prune a rose bush
When it is being planted.
The old, dead canes should be cut away.
It's the new canes that grow the roses.
They do best
In soil where nothing has ever grown before,
So I'm mixing up a new blend
Just for you.
I know it isn't what you're used to,
But this will give you a good place
To put down new roots.
Aren't you tired
Of living in a pot
Full of old dirt?
Let me plant you
Somewhere better."
She shuddered with wonder and fear.
Where was he taking her?
She hated the pot,
But could she really live
Outside of it
In the ground?
"Oh, child," said the man with pride,
"Just wait until you see
The roses you will grow."
He lowered her into the earth.
http://www.rosemagazine.com/pages/pruning.asp
http://www.heirloomroses.com/info/care/how-to/pruning/
http://www.heirloomroses.com/info/care/how-to/transplanting-roses/
