Rosebud — Summary

And for what felt like the millionth time I told them to stay, to wait, stick around, smell those sweet roses and that things would get better, eventually; please stop dancing with the razor's blade and come down off that stirr'd chair.

But they ever-so loved the chair, as they stood there all the time lingering, twirling that ebon blade; and I could only urge them to wait in hopes that someone, eventually would help them with those thorn'd roses.

Though they did remind me so of roses, sprawled around a gardener's chair that he'd get around to dealing with eventually, but letting them withstand the test of time as surely their beauty would be worth the wait rather than taking the scissor'd blade.

I may place my hand upon the blade -that shoulder I had dressed with roses as I warned myself to wait, lean back in my ever-rocking chair and spend the ever-dwindling time holding for what would come, eventually.

Those colors, white, red-and-blue, eventually footsteps rushing, crushing the grassy blade desperate to arrive, come in time pushing past those rotten roses plucking them from the wayward chair and finally relieving me of my quiver'd wait.

And then there'd be no need to wait, and no more need for "eventually," no more use for a flimsy chair, and certainly not that wretched blade or those bloody, shredded roses as it would, at last, be the right'd time.

But 'till then, in this chair I do solemnly wait eyes counting the time, knowing that surely, eventually I'd be liberat'd from sanguine blades in a hollowed bed of roses.

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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.

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