Ashes

"Every spring Emily puts ashes around her rose bushes. The Methodist minister warns her that it will kill them. Every year he tells her this. It will ruin the soil, he says, damage the PH balance. He is always concerned with balance. By mid July her yard is thick with the smell of roses, in the evenings she sits between the bushes and fingers the smooth petals. They feel like the skin of a child between her fingers. She likes the white ones with the peach tips the best. The pink ones makes her smile, the ones with the scarlet streaks in the center make her cry. She brings the minister a bouquet the first Sunday of every June, giving him small white buds and full blown yellow blossoms. Every year she silently hands him the flowers, every year he warns her that next year they won’t bloom, and every year they do. He smiles, secretly, each June when he glimpses her straight-mouth, her reddened fingers clutching the stems."