I’m trying to think of things that would make me feel better today. There are so many reasons to feel joy yet joy is slow to come. Thirty degrees today and snow falling. Have not seen snow since December and then it was not real snow just a dream that vanished.

A sea of roses would make me feel better. Pink ones, white ones, yellow, cream, orange, icy lemon and red ones.  Red roses no longer thrill me when I see them in florists or if I happen to get a bouquet.  They look too red too bloody too dangerous almost funereal. They sometimes turn black at the edges or don’t open at all and look like tiny wet shriveled bird carcasses.  Remind me of that big grey squirrel lying on the ground in front of that big Elm on Ridge Road. The construction crew probably accidentally killed it or maybe that squirrel was as shocked as I was to see another monster house go up so soon so greedily so big and wide on that tiny lot.  Maybe it just died of shock.

Roses though. Red ones deeper than Bordeaux deeper than your bloody heart deeper than your scarlet lips… there in that garden.. the rubies you were searching for the roses you saw with your gorgeous mother decades ago when Detroit was a small quiet village for Slavic immigrants. The fragrance of those roses trailing up that arbor on the street during our walk.  And our hearts thumping thumping thumping at the beauty of roses in that garden. In the botanic garden if you see a really dark red rose your heart does stop.  Like a black hole endlessly wrapping you around its seamless space hurtling you to a chemist’s shop threading all your sighs like Marquez did in “A Hundred Years of Solitude.” The red rose smells like solitude like souls in purgatory like lost soldiers children nomads in the desert… slightly acrid sharp winy… old ladies sometimes wear rose perfume….. young ones smell more like peonies…. but a really red rose a really fragrant one explodes in flavors and sights and smells that you can never ever know or see or capture… it becomes finally an ephemeral thing like these snow flakes falling like a soul expiring like that squirrel dying and no one sees it but says “Ugh!” on the way to work.

Red roses are like ambergris floating in the sea like whale’s blood like your veins throbbing and the rivers of blood aching to get out.

Joy perfume was like that. You think..my God the roses… captured in a bottle. One hundred fifty dollars worth… at the time.. and your fingers tremble at the sight you can hardly open it and sticking your wiggly rabbit nose right in the bottle you smell oldness antiquity dust and dirt and desert and crumbling bones… old lady smells of pent up sorrows and smeared lipstick and cakey powders and thinning hair and wrinkled skin and you sigh trying desperately to smell that rose.

The snow has stopped and I don’t know why the snow has reminded me of roses…

The daffodils are at least five inches high in some places… I hardly glance at them too scary to see them in February.. the lilac is even more frightening… small green leaves like in May.

My head aches my heart hurts the oatmeal was awful and stuck to my ribs… I almost had a glass of wine for breakfast don’t care because summer winter fall spring is a mess a tangled scary confusing tortured mess.

The snow keeps falling though and always reminds me of souls stars black holes clean water …

I watch cowboy movies all day long all day long to forget everything.. rifles and cowboys the simple rights and wrongs and women in long dresses…

But sitting here now looking out at the frozen garden which just two days ago was thawing like it does in April… I would be happy if I saw the birds in the birdbath the daffodils smiling…. some of them smell like lemons… I would love a clean glass of water, a pure tiny strawberry like the Kings of Aranjuez ate… or the old hatted ladies of Wimbledon… I would be happy if you and I were playing tennis again in Chopin Park surrounded by apple blossoms and running, running, running home to the endless gin and tonics and mom and dad happy sometimes in the little garden and mom running up to us and shouting “Oh look the roses the roses the roses!”