A rose was born one sunny day,
It lived its life the usual way.
It ate, it slept, it thought, it felt,
It took whatever it was dealt.
Until one day it looked around,
Unhappiness was all it found.
Its life became the cruelest joke,
Upon this day when it awoke.
The life it lived had been a lie,
The world now hateful to its eye.
The rose thought nothing could be worse,
Than living in this universe -
But then inside the looking glass,
It found its enemy at last.
And looking at what it had done,
It hated what it had become.
The torture of its own self-hate,
Doomed it to the darkest fate.
The pressure of this took its toll,
Blackening the roses soul.
A darker side of this young rose,
Was born from out of its own woes.
And this black rose; this darker side,
Decided it was best to hide.
Withering away from life,
It willingly embraced its strife.
Withdrawing from the living world,
Its thorns went out; its petals curled.
The first stage of this sharp decline,
This downward spiral of the mind -
Came when the rose first embraced death,
Letting out its heart's last breath.
It pulled away; gave up on love,
The crow replaced the pure white dove.
The black rose, withered from its pain,
Saw no reason to remain.
But deep within its sorrowed breast,
A tattered scrap of hope did rest.
For after all it's still a rose,
Which symbolizes all that grows.
And what is growth but living hope,
A symbol of life's strength to cope?
And so the rose continues on,
Always doing something wrong.
Withered, black, and never free,
The worst part is; this rose is me.
