The Ghost in the Garden

They buried her beneath the rosebushes,

where the roots could drink her sorrow.

She had spent her life trimming vines,

weaving beauty from burden,

cutting back the wild things that longed to grow.

She was a wife.

A title like a locked door,

a ring like a rusted shackle.

She cooked. She cleaned. She folded herself

into something small enough to fit

inside the silence of a man’s home.

Her laughter faded first,

then her voice,

then the light in her hands.

When she died, they said,

"She was a good woman."

And the roses bloomed red as a wound.

But at night, when the wind moves strangely,

the vines creep through windows,

wrapping around bedposts,

whispering secrets in a voice like hers.

The house groans under their weight.

The roses will not stop growing.

She is no longer trimming them back.

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