Crimson Testament

I planted devotion
in a garden of black soil
where roses climb the trellis
like slow, patient flames.

Each petal is a small mouth opening
to say what hearts cannot.
Poe would look for rot here,
he would mourn beside a raven’s watchful eye,
but this bloom is rich and stubborn.
It is velvet-red
like the hour before midnight.
It is the quick pulse beneath your wrist
when I hold it to my lips.

There is a stillness in the darkness
that is not despair.
It is the hush of a candle
the second before it is lit,
the last breath
before the first word of a vow.

Thorns are not punishment but proof.
Love that costs nothing
was never love at all,
just a slight scratch on the skin
to remind us we are alive.

Keats stayed half in love
with easeful shadows.
Here the shadow only makes the color deeper,
a rich gold turning
before something beautiful
insists on being born.

So let the roses grow wild.
Let them grow unafraid,
tangled like the sentences
of an old, urgent letter.
Red enough to make the sunset look pale.
Red enough to make the raven blink
and look away from grief
toward something stranger,
a joy with fire in its mouth,
a tenderness that does not flinch
from the dark it grows within.

If you must haunt me,
love, haunt me like this.
A garden at midnight
glowing without a flame.
Our fingers laced together
in the cool grass.
Roses nodding their heavy heads
as if they, too, know the secret,
that darkness is not the absence of love
but the rich earth
from which it rises,
unafraid,
immortal,
blooming bright red against the black.