I wanted to paint it. I had pulled my
watercolours out of retirement and set up everything,
just so. A little paper cup filled with
water, my three brushes that have seen so much usage, and the box of
paints...
I couldn't do it. The petals were curling at the edges, and falling off if I touched the blossom with anything more than a butterfly's pressure. The stem was dry, and brittle, and in some places it looked like the limbs of an old, old man - sharply jutting this way and that in awkward angles of dead, polluted emerald.
It deserved a rest, this rose. I think you gave it to me on my birthday, four months ago. I dried it in my window. It wasn't dead then, though, because it still had color and life and the memories attached to it were so fresh, like blood. New blood, before it dries up on your skin and turns from vibrant red to a withered imitation of the same.
So I took the flower, and tore all of the petals off, and threw them out the open window. The wind picked up, and stole the shreds away to places unknown, and secret, and hidden from people's memories. A suiting funeral.