Fulcrum of a Rose?

To be fair, Shakespeare got the jump on roses, used up all the best descriptions. It's bad enough we're out here pretending to be Ada Limón and Billy Collins, only to wax about the break of a clichéd organ in relation to a common flower. A flower I can't keep alive in the backyard but that somehow persists in the collective consciousness— hardy in symbol, finicky in soil— for more than a millennia. My first husband used to say I had a parts-per-million nose, could sniff out a broccoli lunch from two weeks ago, if I kissed him. I rarely did, which is how I met my second one— the one who said I smelled like garlic before a storm, and meant it as a compliment. I used to believe there was something to be learned from that. But the point is, the guts of a thing— what makes it beat, or bloom, or cling to a wooden stick— is as a god, or how corndogs are made: it is ineffable.