Chuck’s heat steams my leaves. "So sweet," he says, "you're always so sweet in the first flush of spring."

       My petals strain to his cheek. His whiskers are raw; a thousand blades shredding the hot velvet of my bud.

        His nose dips.  His eyes close.

       A quick prick, and I'll have him.  I crawl up the side of his house, sharpen my thorns on the stucco.

       Chuck sprays me with the bone meal and the heavy phosphate.

       Up my naked canes and out my tender sprouts, I pump the perfume that drives him wild:  the honey cloves and the morning dew.

       Chuck's nostrils widen.  He sprays me again.

       I quiver by the nectar that pounds through his neck.  My thorns graze his skin, probe for the pulse; and now--

       I plunge.

       He screams and slaps his neck, and my branch whips back against the stucco.  "Dratted mosquitos," he says, and his blood dribbles and my sepals curl and tighten and lap the hot juice.

       His fist tightens around silver shears. "Think I'll snip off some suckers.  It'll give you more strength, Glory, more roses.  You look a bit peaked."

       Go ahead, Chuck, snip my suckers.  Prune me, baby, like a madman.

       His shears are sharp.  They sever me down at the root trunk where I'm most sensitive.  Buds bust from my stems.  Perfumes pump from my anthers.

       "You look like you're gonna die, Glory.  Wish I knew what kind of rose you are."  He leers at me, then wipes his paws on his pants and gathers his tools.

       I'm an unnamed seedling, Chuck, born from the roots of wild stock and fed on the mush of bony phosphate.  The mice and the kittens know, and even the neighborhood dogs stay away from me.

       But Chuck shrugs--we just don't communicate on anything but a physical level--and then he fondles a leaf and saunters away with two withered blooms.

       The fence gate creaks.  My little bud eyes swivel. Chuck is behind the house, stooping by his wife's grave.  Even from a distance, his steam scorches my sap.

       His paw rests upon the stone cross.  The paw that stroked me.  And now my two flowers are on the cross.  They wilt.  They die.  Their corpses fall to the dirt.

       What does Chuck see in dead bones?  Why does he love her more than me?

       The screen door slams.  He's entered the safety of the stucco house.  If only I could come with you; oh Chuck, you succulent hunk of bloody raw steak.  I curl my tendrils over his roof gutters and sweat.

       The afternoon sun streams down, plasters me like melted dough against Chuck's house.  I'm all alone.  My branches ache.  My leaves are soggy mash.  And the sky frowns and dumps its rain.

       At the far end of the yard, Chuck's garden sucks up the water and laughs.  Beans bulge and split their seams.  Tomatoes throb like hearts; they mock me.  Garlic surfs the breeze, and when I lash at the fumes, they curl from my grasp and snicker.

       I break out with cankers and crown gall, with mildew and blackspot.

       I need nightfall.  I need it badly.

       I cling to the house.  I shrivel.

       I bake for an eternity.  Finally, the sun buries itself behind the cemetery.  Night comes down and gives me a black kiss.  And now my stems surge and my buds explode into crimson roses.

       Something sniffs my bottom buds and nibbles.  I turn twenty branches toward the ground.  Dozens of my bud eyes peer through the gloom.

       And there it is:  a mouse scurrying along the base of the house, trying to slurp water from my leaves.

       Twenty branches descend.

       A thousand thorns thrust, retract, and thrust again.

       The corpse is warm.  My leaves smother it, and my stomata open wide and drink.  Blood runs thick through my stems.

       I leave the skin and bones.  Eventually, they'll rot into the soil and nourish my roots.

       A cat approaches, cautiously.  I pop a root from the ground and poke its belly.  It howls and runs into the night.

       By morning, I've sucked dry three stray dogs and a host of rodents.

       Chuck is yawning.  He drinks steam from a clay cup.  Gracing the side of the cup is a picture of a Rosa roxburghii:  pink and anemic, a water drinker.

       The sun's rays tear into me.  My flowers close into tight balls and hide.

       Chuck sets aside his cup and packs manure around my lower extremities, down by the sensitive spots where he snatched my suckers.  The manure is cold and smells of rot.  Chuck must love me.

       "Jesus!  What the hell is this?"  He leaps back and the blood drains from his face.  He pulls on gloves and grabs a shovel.  He heaps the remains of the mouse and the dogs and the other beasts into a green bag.  I know that I'm a sloppy eater, but why is he so angry?

       He drags the plastic bag somewhere behind the house, then returns with a hose and several cans and a spray gun.

       He spritzes me with the bone meals and the phosphates, and to thank him, I scratch his arms and drink his nectar.  He squirts insecticides from bright yellow cans with crossbones on them.  He cuts my cankers and tumors,sprays me with lime sulfur, with folpet and zineb and ferbam.  And with streptomycin to cure my crown gall.

       I'm so lucky to be loved by Chuck.

       The cross in the cemetery casts a shadow across us.  It's the dead wife.  She won't leave us alone.  Even dead, she tries to win him back.  I break out with mildew.  Chuck does not notice.  He stares at his wife's grave.

       Now he turns to me with a big grin.  "You know what you need, Glory?  To be transplanted next to Rosemary.  The soil's good there, and besides, you'll be good company for her.  Rosemary always loved you when she was alive."

       Rosemary:  the witch who planted white Madonna lilies and wore a gold cross around her neck.  Rosemary:  the witch who planted the garlic.  I said to her once, "Go on, honey, snip my suckers--ha, if you dare," and fool that she was, Rosemary dared.

       Her blood was thin and bitter.

       Now Chuck is packing all his cans and spray guns into a wheelbarrow.  He thrusts a shovel into the ground by my roots.  He cackles.  "Don't really know much about gardening, but one thing I do know:  you need something to make you healthy.  You're always breaking out with diseases.  And your flowers look sick."

       But I'm always so sweet in the first flush of spring ....

       Ack, the shovel splinters my stems. Chuck's weight heaves against the handle, thrusting into me, snapping me, killing me, draining my sap.  He hacks and he hacks, and soon I'm screaming inside and everywhere, the rodents titter at me, and if all that were not enough, Chuck rips me from the ground.

       And now, I am naked to the world.  My shame burns.  I want to die I want to die I want

       to die.

       Chuck plops me atop the folpets and the zinebs, and he carts me across the yard.

       His gloved paws pack me into a small hole by her grave.  My bud eyes turn from the cross.  I will not look I will not

       look, but I do look and half a dozen branches splinter and fall from me, and instantly they turn to dust.

       Chuck does not notice.  "Oh, Rosemary, how I miss you.  Perhaps the fragrance of Glory's roses will cheer you."

       My tender sprouts are splayed across her grave.  I'm so weak I can barely move.

       Chuck drags the hose across the yard.  He fills the hole with water--

       with WATER--

       and now I'm sopped in oxydemetonmethyls and nicotine sulfates

       and dimethoates and carbaryls and manebs and folpets and ferbams

       and I'm dying from it all, and yet

       I need Chuck.

       I need his blood.

       But he leaves me, as all lovers do, and again the screen door slams.  My roots slip deep into the earth and slither to Rosemary's coffin.  The wood is rotting, and easily I pick through the debris and slide within and find the cold bones.

       This is what Chuck loves.  This is what Chuck prefers to me.

       I cross my roots over her ribs.  My thorns drill into the bone.  I try to suck the marrow, but it's dust.

       All night, I wait; all night, I plan.  And when morning comes, I know that Chuck will be mine.

       He slurps from the Rosa roxburghii cup. His greasy whiskers shine in the sun.  "I have a gift for you," he says.

       Ooh, possibly a fat blood-glutted dog?

       "This will help you grow huge flowers, Glory."

       Must be a special treat...a neighbor; or better yet, a priest or rabbi.

       I want to thank him, so I scratch his ankle and lap the blood.

       "Dratted mosquitos, driving me nuts."  He pullss his leg from me, then drags something large across the lawn and through the creaking cemetery gate.  "Your gift," he says.

       Ooh, it's a...

       ...a cross-hatched trellis?

       I wilt against the gravestone.

       He pulls a hammer from his workbelt.  He drives the stakes into my roots.

       I scream and I lunge, and my thorns are deep within his throat, stabbing and stabbing--

       and he's slapping at me and howling, and thick worms of blood stream down his neck, and he runs into the house and the screen door slams.

       His blood has made me strong.  My roots snake under the lawn and drill into his basement.  They wait until nightfall.

       Inside the coffin, roots tangle and twist around Rosemary's bones.  One root rips the cross from her chest and crushes it.  Others slither up the trellis, knot into fists, and pull the cross-hatched monstrosity to the ground.

       And now I'm ready.  Across Chuck's lawn, my roots poke through the grass and spring into the night air.  I will be everywhere, always, for Chuck.

       The thrum of his heart calls to me.  I'm hungry, and dogs and cats won't do.  I've loved Chuck for so long.  I want to make him happy.  I will give him back to Rosemary.

       My roots curl up his walls, slither like snakes up the basement stairs.  I find him snoring in the bed.

       The bed he shared with Rosemary.

       This time, he will share it with me.