It is like this

"The roses have not lost their color,"
This is what she insisted when we spoke
on our way to the frost-biten earth beds
before she planted them, and I watched as
the petals crackled, threatened to shatter,
into a fine gray dust that used to be baby-pink.

And trying to convince her that the flowers
were dead, would not simply quench their thirst
on the snow, and sink their roots into sun-warmed
earth, when the spring came, this conversaton,
carried the same futility as an astronomer in love
with a remote star, that died eons ago, but still shines.

With those flowers, drooping under the weight of
the grey skies, and her hands, caked in dry dirt,
I feel as though we are like a madman clinging to
a piece of driftwood, ignoring the circling sharks.