C14 FOURTEEN

You are All the World

ROSE

For you, in my respect, are all the world; Then how can it be said I am alone, When all the world is here to look on me?

—William Shakespeare, A Midsummer Night's Dream

"HI, ROSE." HE handed me a single, purple rose that nature could not have created.

Stunned, robbed of voice and thought, I accepted it. It pulsed with power and smelled like heaven