She sits in her small apartment
she can barely afford on Social Security.
Her looks are gone, her male admirers too.
She reflects back on her flowering years
when many men eyed her and wanted her.
She regrets always picking the wrong ones,
and rejecting those that were the right ones.
Now that she is drearily alone and unloved
sometimes she buys herself the roses
men used to buy for her, thanking that maybe
beautiful flowers will make her feel better.
But when they wilt and begin to die,
they remind her of her beauty that has wilted,
and that she has become a fading flower.
She has sunk into an abyss of depression
with disturbing thoughts of killing herself.
But instead of killing herself, she prays
to God every day to rescue her from
her gloomy life and take her to heaven.
Each day she wakes up, her prayers
unanswered, but today her phone rings,
an ex-love has called, and when he says
he loves her, she begins to rise out of the abyss.
Bob Boyd