Fulcrum of a Rose?

To be fair, Shakespeare got the jump on roses and their requisite scents. It's bad enough we're out here pretending to compete with Ada Limón and Billy Collins, only to wax about the most clichéd organ in relation to the most common flower. A flower I can't even 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 husband— who said I smelled like ozone 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: they're ineffable.