Red sleeps dressed in roses,
and dreams overflow in the dead of sleep,
drifting like petals over stone walls crawled with vines.

Red dreams flow like blood
over steps and courtyards,
over hills and river valleys into lands beyond sunrise.

Red blooms nod in noonday sun,
and thick branches twisted with age
gather into a shadowy cage filled with furtive eyes that blink and shine.

Red sunsets glow against unguarded turrets,
and blush briefly on faded armor worn by corpses,
long ago caught by thorns as sharp as spindles winding time.

Red fire burns in the heart of a man,
clad in armor, prayer and the courage of a lion
come to put a curse to rest in the dark of night.

Red wakes upon a bed of roses,
feeling the pricking of small thorns drawing blood,
from a dream of a fiery kiss, a sword and a heart blooming back to life.

Author’s Note:

I came across a poetry challenge involving a phrase about roses and couldn’t help but think of Sleeping Beauty and the illustrations of Trina Schart Hyman in her 1977 retelling of that fairy tale. Putting the Disney version aside, fairy tales are archetypes and there are layers of meaning and emotion in the original fairy tales which makes them timeless.

photo by Anastasiia Chaikovska

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