Pretty plastic roses
That you don’t have to tend
They’re always looking perfect
They’ll never see an end
Then there are picked roses
The kind with rips and tears
The petals fall off one by one
While you just sit and stare
She had them sitting on her shelf
The ones that used to live
Then faster faster day by day
They looked about to give
The tips were brown, she opened them
The bud had kept its red
She said that life, would not give up
And swore they were not dead
The sun then set a few more times
And even the hopeful fools
Could see those flowers had no life
Death followed certain rules
She gripped the vase that was made of glass
The redness all but there
The crispness of the flower stems
The blankness in her stare
She saw the plastic perfection
The ones that death had kept
They sat there perfect no rips or tears
And she wept and wept and wept