by Tinelou Kliem
Disclaimer: I’m no biologist and have no idea of the scientific descriptions or processes
Content Warning: Death, Pain, Dehydration, Drowning (all mostly from introspective)
Water. Our rose could feel it. Her roots touched it and absorbed it. Slowly, it made its way
through the roots to the stem of our rose bush. It continued through the branches, through the
leaves, up to the beautiful crowns of her flowers. A human could not detect it, but in a tiny
movement the leaves of the flowers seemed to exhale in relief. After her body was saturated
with water, her senses extroverted until she found a connection to the other rose bushes
behind her.
Out of the row of rose bushes she was at the very end. Or the start. However, one wanted to
view it. Right next to her, there was a little lake. A tiny one. Almost only a puddle. Every
rainy day it filled up with water while every sunny day drained it. Who also drained it, only a
bit, was our rose bush. She took the water every time she needed it. She took it until she was
satisfied and then provided the other rose bushes next to her. Her body was the thing that
separated them from the water source. Our rose grew between them. All the water the others
could get had to pass through her first. And she hated it. She felt responsible. She was guilty.
Not by fact. But by sentiment.
The last days had been sunny and very dry. Our rose tried to sustain the water. Rationalize it.
But she couldn’t resist though. Not her own thirst, not the screams of the other rose bushes.
The other bushes screamed. At her. For her. All the time. It drained her but she felt justified.
Justified to suffer. Suffering because her life was the easiest of them all. By default.
The next day it rained a lot so our rose tried to capture as much water as she could. Keep it to
provide the others. The next days, weeks, it didn’t rain anymore. Not once. The lake shrunk to
a puddle, the puddle to wet stains. It got so dry that the rose bushes forgot how rain felt. How
the little drops of water felt on their leaves. They simply forgot. The only one who was in
constant contact with the water was our rose bush. Her roots stayed drained. Even though the
water from the lake had almost entirely vanished by now, the soil was still wet enough. The
sun wasn’t strong enough yet to reach it. Our rose hated it and hated herself, but she knew she
could use her situation. If she could just harvest the water, keep it and protect it, she could
keep the others hydrated too.
After the first week one of her neighboring bushes started to scream. At first it was quiet,
barely a whisper but it got louder every hour until it was loud enough for another bush to join
in. After a few more days, the whole row of rose bushes was screaming. Everyone except our
rose. Everyone suffered except our rose. She couldn’t hold it any longer, so she slowly
canalized the water through her roots to the rose bush next to her. At first, she was afraid it
would take all the water by itself, but it channeled it to the next one, to the next one and one
after another the screams became quieter until they stopped again.
But now the resources were almost empty. She had given them all she had. They weren’t used
to being without water for this long. Usually a human came to water them, but it didn’t show
up. It let them down. Our rose was tired. She still tried to collect as much water from the
ground as she could to give to the others, but it wasn’t much. The soil around her roots
became dryer and dryer. She tried to feel around her. The other rose bushes only
communicated with her when they needed water. There was not much else that grew around
them except for the grass on the other side of the flower bed. Under the rocks on the surface,
that separated them, she tried to feel for their roots. In hope of comfort. Comfort from the
grass patches. A lot of it was dry and dead though, here and there were tired roots that seemed
to be in a kind of energy conserving slumber.
Maybe she could try that too, thought our rose. To save energy. On the other hand, the other
rose bushes needed her. They relied on her. She could not rest!
The next days it still didn’t rain and our rose bush became tired. Every day she collected as
much humidity as she could. Reached deeper and deeper into the ground until the next layer
of soil became completely dried out. Then she reached even deeper. She did not know what
was down there. She knew no more about her surroundings than what she could feel. The
other roses had fallen into a slumber like the grass, two days ago.
Our rose bush became weaker and weaker but fought against slumbering too. She should not
slumber. For the last few days her fear also grew that she wouldn’t wake up from it anymore.
Out of fear and responsibility she started to forget herself. Started to forget to care for herself,
to check for her limbs every day, to check if they were all still alive. All her thoughts laid on
the other roses. On the future. On how she would save them, provide them when it would
finally rain again.
She got so distanced from herself that she didn’t realize how her leaves slowly started to curl.
It started on one branch. One single branch, that got numb first and died quickly afterwards. If
our rose had realized it sooner, she could have fought it or maybe she would have been too
weak anyways. Now it was too late. As our rose bush finally noticed it she couldn’t feel much
of herself anymore. There wasn’t much left. She was shocked, yes, but didn’t even have the
strength to pity herself or even realize the fatality of her situation. She truly believed to be
fine as soon as the rain would come, but she was wrong.
The next day a human came to the rose bushes. Its heavy steps were the first thing our rose
bush noticed. She was too weak to think anything about it until she felt a heavy breath on one
of her flowers. Suddenly a short pain ran through that branch. Then the flower was gone.
Pain. And the next one. And again pain. After just a few minutes the human had cut all of her
flowers. She was used to losing a few here and there. Every year the humans loved to pick
them, but they never took them all. They always left some of them to die naturally. The rose
flowers the human had picked from our rose still held a little bit of her sentiment so when the
human shoved a shovel beneath our rose bushes roots and lifted her up in her entirety, that
part of her died in an instant. Maybe because she gave up. Maybe because she was too weak
by the human later. In its appartement, the human put the vase on the window lane and opened
it so that fresh air ran through the rose flowers last moments.
The eruption, the short moment of shock, when our rose bush got taken out, let the other rose
bushes awaken from their slumber. They felt the shock, the loss, but couldn’t put it to a
conclusion. They had never noticed our rose. Never noticed her as one of them or their
provider. Only as the source of their water that let them down. Out of pain and suffering they
started screaming again. Screamed and our rose whose last breaths of life slowly faded out of
the flowers in the window, heard it. She heard it and couldn’t do anything about it anymore.
She died with the knowledge that she killed the other roses. That she couldn’t provide them
anymore with the last water. That she infected them with her illness. She died full of guilt.
When the gardener who took her out came back the next day to clean up the flower bed, he
started to realize how deep our rose bushes roots went. He wanted to clean it up, take them
out, but every time he pulled a root out, he saw another one that went down even deeper. After
a while he had finally reached the last one. When he pulled it out, he realized that it went so
deep it almost reached the ground water. The root missed half a centimeter, the size of a
pebble, and it would have found another water source. The gardener also checked the other
roses. None of them were infected but all of them were half dead so he took his watering can
and watered the rose bushes. But they couldn’t harbor the water. They couldn’t contain it.
They forgot how to. They had forgotten how to provide themselves. The gardener didn’t know
what to do because even though he watered them constantly, they never got better.
Finally, after a few more days it started raining again. It rained as much as it hadn’t rained in
years. The grass grew again. The puddle became a lake again. Everything was relieved.
Everything except for the rose bushes. They just weren’t capable of reaching the waters. They
got so used to getting the water directly from our rose that they couldn’t sustain themselves
anymore. After a few days they drowned. They drowned in their own saving. Drowned in
their hope and pain and joined our rose in the afterlife.
Tinelou Kiliem is a student at Universität Bielefeld.
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