The Wild Rose

It was late afternoon,
and the sky had just rinsed the world clean.
The path I walked shimmered with puddles,
the air tender and wet, the kind of wet that stays on your skin —
not from rain,
but from everything that came before it.

I wasn’t looking for anything,
but something reached for me —
a scent. Subtle, pulsing. Almost erotic in its quiet insistence.
Not perfume.
Nature.
Raw. Feminine. Wild.

I turned and saw it —
a bush, deep green and soaked,
spilling softly over the edge of the path like a secret trying to stay unnoticed.
No flowers in sight.
Just weighty leaves and water.
But the scent…
it wrapped around my body before I could name it.

I stepped closer, drawn.
My hand moved without thinking.
I parted the branches.

And inside —
buried, hidden —
were rosebuds.
Small, blushing, folded tight from the rain.
They hadn’t opened. Not yet.
They were waiting for sunlight.

But still — they breathed.
Still — they gave.

I picked three. Maybe four.
And one of them —
the one that felt most like a whisper —
I saved for her.


---

I don’t know why I did it.
Only that I needed to.
Sometimes, beauty doesn’t belong to the one who finds it.
It belongs to the one who can’t see herself.

When I saw her, I said softly,
“This is for you.”

She smiled.
That smile —
it moved something low in me,
like a string pulled under the skin.
She looked at the bud in her hand and said,
“A rose?”
or maybe,
“A little wild one?”
I don’t remember the exact word.
Only her eyes — surprised, amused, briefly unguarded.

I wanted to say:
“Yes. Like you. Wild. Closed. Breathing.”
But I didn’t.
I just looked at her.
And in that space between my silence and her breath —
I touched her back.

Only for a second.
Only enough to say,
I feel you. I still do.


---

And now I wonder…

Will she remember the scent on her fingers later,
when she brushes her hair behind her ear?
Will the softness stay in her spine,
where I touched her —
so lightly it felt like a breeze?

Did I leave a moment inside her?
Or was it mine alone?

I’ll never know.
But I gave the flower.
And the flower — gave itself, too.