Between the Seasons

Where black roses grow.

He found her beneath a dying sky,

where winter had strangled the last colors

from the earth.

She stood among black roses,

their petals heavy with rain,

their thorns drinking moonlight.

There was sorrow in her beauty.

Not the gentle sorrow of falling leaves,

but the ancient grief of oceans

that have swallowed entire worlds

and never spoken of it.

He loved her immediately.

The way a storm loves the sea,

violently,

inevitably,

without mercy.

And she,

who had learned to hide her heart

beneath layers of frost and silence,

felt something awaken inside her,

something dangerous,

something alive.

The forest knew.

The trees leaned closer

when they passed beneath their branches.

The wind carried their names

through the darkened valleys.

Even the wolves,

with their amber eyes,

fell quiet

as if witnessing a sacred wound.

For love like theirs

was never meant to be gentle.

It was roots breaking stone.

It was wildfire beneath snow.

It was two lonely souls

finding themselves

in the shadows of each other's ruin.

He kissed her

as thunder rolled across the mountains.

And she kissed him

as though she could steal

every sorrow from his chest

and bury it within her own.

But nature demands a price

for every beautiful thing.

The roses withered.

The rivers flooded.

The seasons sharpened their knives.

Time circled them like a hungry crow.

Still they loved.

Even as darkness gathered

at the edges of their days.

Even as the world whispered

that nothing beautiful survives forever.

And perhaps it was right.

For one autumn evening,

beneath a sky bleeding gold and crimson,

she became part of the falling leaves.

And he became part of the rain.

The earth took them separately.

Yet every spring,

where the black roses bloom,

their story returns.

The rain falls softer there.

The wind speaks more gently.

And the roses open their dark hearts

toward the sky.

As if remembering two lovers

who loved each other so fiercely

that nature itself

could not decide

whether their love was a blessing

or a catastrophe.

So it made them both,

eternal.

He in the rain.

She in the roses.

Forever reaching for one another

through the long darkness

between the seasons.