Roses

Apprehension accompanied me to my car. How would they react? With sadness? Indifference?I placed the bouquet lovingly into the trunk, holding back tears.

The intended beholders knew nothing of its history. Nor of the person who presented it to me. Roses, once of warmth and vivid pink, had crumpled to shades of aged dryness. Like his love did, when he left for another and I didn’t realize he meant it for real.

I set the vase onto my desk in the classroom, for my art students to observe, interpret and present their creativity onto canvas—of a life stilled.

From Guest Contributor Krystyna Fedosejevs

Old Fire Station - Berlin - March 20, 1939

HISTORICAL FICTION ENTRY:

Removing his peaked cap, Gerhard runs his hand thru his fair, slicked-back hair. He is only a soldier: molded by the Nazi party. He isn’t a person just something to enforce Chancellor Hitler’s government. This time though, the instructions come from Joseph Goebbel. Anything marked with an X gets no mercy.

Gerhard stares into the inferno that devours the art dubbed degenerate. The canvases feeds the blaze, bubbles, and burns: turning into searing embers that fade to ash. He never understood art. The only thing he knows is everything burns. No matter the color, vibrancy, culture, religion.

We’ll all burn!

From Guest Contributor McKenzie A. Frey