Rosebud begins with a speaker pleading with someone, or perhaps several people, who seem close to ending their own lives. The images are a razor blade, a chair they stand on, and roses with thorns. The speaker begs them to wait, to stay, and to believe things will improve "eventually." That word comes back again and again, and it starts to sound more like a hope clung to than a promise.
Midway through, the poem turns inward. The speaker puts a hand to the blade, and the "they" begins to blur with the speaker. The later stanzas suggest a longing for relief, with rushing footsteps and an end to waiting. The poem's final lines imagine liberation from "sanguine blades" in a "hollowed bed of roses."
The mood is heavy, tense and weary. The repeated end-words (chair, blade, roses, time, wait) make the poem feel stuck in a loop, like the waiting itself. Beauty and danger are tangled together throughout. It is a difficult poem, and readers may want to take care with it.