To a Faded Rose

A speaker turns to a wilted rose and finds there the ghost of what it once was: the crimson flush of first bloom, the perfume of something precious now lost. Switzer's poem is a brief, aching meditation on beauty's fragility, on how we grieve things not for what they are but for what they remembered being. The rose becomes a mirror for all that fades: youth, passion, the moments we didn't know were precious until they passed. Written in the tender, precise language of an age that understood elegance as a form of honesty, this poem asks whether it's the flower that has faded or the speaker's own capacity for wonder. It lingers like the scent of petals already fallen, a small perfect thing for anyone who has ever mourned the ordinary.