Thoughts for thorns

To the roses,

I give you my thoughts for thorns,

let them seed like the links in chain mail, hooking into your flesh,

bared against the eyes of men that analyze your body

but do not weigh the war raging in your mind.

You are veterans of wanting hands

that chased you in the darkness while the men went away,

plucking your thorns,

breathing in your euphoria clustered in the crooks of your curves,

digging and digging into you until their memory was etched in your roots,

glinting in the morning, polished like bare stems in dawn.