plastic roses

some humans are like plastic roses:
their artificial beauty
recreated
  nonsensical
    silly
  fake
cheap.
prostitutes
exploited
exploiting
visual stimuli -
many colors, all the same:
  unreal
   lifeless
 emotionless
cold.
plastic roses wither when revealed
- nobody wants to be betrayed -
but are beautiful when unrecognized.

the monday after valentine's day, he gave me a bouquet. not of flowers, but of little plastic roses.
i remember thinking, "flowers eventually die. these will last forever."
only two months later, i'm alone. i see the bouquet, still on my bureau.
everything dies. at least flowers are real.

this has stuck with me for a while. occasionally surfacing from dark corners of my memory when my thoughts drift back to her
but we'll save that for when i get around to adding my own overly personal node