I would compare us to the Beauty and the Beast, but I have not such low self-esteem

 

so as to compare my countenance to that of the beast,

 

and you, clearly, do not fit the bill. You could try for 100 years and you still would be too lovely

 

too kind

 

to be sincerely seen as a beast,

 

for beauty is in the eye of the enchanted rose

 

that withers and droops

 

when time and love run out

 

not because it needs to see beauty to love

 

but because it needs love to see beauty

 

that can be so eloquently described in any number of letters, for as many poets, such as Shakespeare, have pointed out,

 

you are not a rose.

 

 

A rose cannot think such beautiful thoughts, nor laugh joyously nor weep, though it tries

 

with the dew that collects on its rosy petals

 

and drips slowly down the stem

 

of all our problems, that is, uncertainty...

 

 

 

If you were a flower, so much more delightfully complex than a rose, or a chrysanthemum,

 

or even a Venus Fly Trap,

 

you would curl your indigo petals into your deep eye;

 

eyes that is;

 

for you simply could not be,

 

not if you tried for 100 years,

 

a rose

 

a beast

 

a ray of sunlight softly pushing through blue curtains in a red velvet room- curtains that do not symbolize sadness but

 

are simply blue curtains;

 

or anything but the smiling valiant sinner

 

of you