Short Story Assignment inspired by “The Poison of the Blue Rose” by Yasmin Marri

She is here again, creeping about my ruins.

One can almost taste the mold lining my walls. It colonizes every crack and crevice, every corner where the moisture of the tears once shed in this house allowed its growth. The tears were mainly hers. They bombarded the supports of my house, attempting to provoke my sympathy. But I wasn’t to be moved by her show of emotion. How dare she interfere with my choices? She had been created within my walls, sucked everything from my walls, beat, kicked, and broken my walls, and I was supposed to let her decide what she wants? How would she know what to do? When would she realize that the one person who would let her live in their ruins is her mother?

And yet, she is here, touching my rickety staircase. It shudders under her hand, and I shudder too. I haven’t seen her since my funeral. Her ghost of a body had sat in the front row, but she was the first to leave, dodging all of the murmurs of sympathy from the crowd.

To her, I was already a ghost. She would ask in her youth, “Mother, why are you so blue? Are you sick?” I would never answer her because the knowledge would drain the color out of her face. I was mesmerized by her pink glow when she burst out of my walls, so I put it in her name: pink rose.

“My pink rose. You can play in my ruins, run up my rickety staircase, scream in my hallways, and repaint my walls with any color you desire. You can remain pure and innocent for eternity.”

I was innocent in a way as well. But when I saw her pink body looking for a patch of dirt to plant herself in, a blind fear enveloped me. Her hue was deepening, becoming the color that I once was. My mother had let me reach my full potential: a blossoming red beauty that was envied by everyone. My strong body reached for the sun, and I could barely see all the blue roses beneath me – blue roses chained to the earth by circumstance and grief.

My home was gleaming, filled with fresh paint and lavish, shining furniture. Not a speck of dust was to be found. Laughter used to echo through my walls, like thunder followed by the gush of rain. I didn’t hear the whispers snaking between the rooms until it was too late.

Laughter, now, a trickle from a leaky tap. Dust made itself home on my centerpieces. The blue roses had sliced my stem in half, and my body came tumbling down, landing with a thud on the dirt. I had managed to drag myself to a river, wherein I saw my beautiful color fading away, replaced by the sickly blue of death. There was a lot of laughter from the crowd then, a malicious type, one that made me lock myself into my ruins – a final act of submission.

So, years later, when I saw my pink rose following the same fate, my heart yearned to save her. She was blossoming without restraint, soon to be too tall for me to control.

The blade rested heavy in my hand that night – heavy out of love and the sacrifice love required. I created an ideal in my mind, that she would love me for what I was about to. I wanted her to say, “Thank you, mother, for saving me.” I wanted her to understand that the pain is much more bearable if it is one’s mother who destroys you.

She didn’t. That night I pulled her roots out and felt her go limp in my arms. Her face darkened, the dark kohl around her eyes giving her a hue of impurity – a result of painful knowledge that could never be erased. The pink color that I had grown to love over the years drained from her face in a few seconds. She was then, a mirror image of myself: blue and bitter.

I caressed her face, “I love you.” We just stared at each other for a moment until she broke the silence. 

“Am I supposed to laugh or cry at my name?” She asked the question even though she knew the answer.  Her tears flooded my home, drowned me in guilt, and then washed away, leaving my hollow-body filled with the aftermath of love.  When my pink rose had managed to drag herself away from me, there was no physical remnant of me left to care for. So, I passed a week after. I didn’t commit suicide. Blue roses do not do that. Blue roses are passive to both life and death, our stems arched to the ground in compliance with circumstances beyond our control. We have no desires because we were already ghosts in life. We do not return to the past for comfort, nor pain.

And yet, she is here, creeping about my ruins, returning to the place where all of her sorrow began. She climbs up my rickety staircase and sits on the bed. She looks at me, but also through me –  one ghost acknowledging another. But there was a life stirring between us. Her stomach, round, swelling with a seed glowing pink with potential. A pink flower sucking life out of a ghost. A ghost – my ghost – that speaks for the first time, with eyes reflecting the love that I had longed for all of these trying years:

“Thank you.”

---

In Yasmin Marri’s short story, I fell in love with the symbolism of the ruins and the blue rose. I threaded these throughout my piece, showing how they changed as time progressed. My emulation attempts to show the perspective of Gulab Bibi’s mother, who, out of love, sacrificed her daughter before the world could hurt her. I do believe that Gulab Bibi’s mother had good intentions, and only wanted her daughter to be safe.