For The Sunday Muse prompt #59, Photography by Carlo Pautasso.

***
Plucked by its roots
from a place where it once
was whole, it lies now alone,
the brightness of its petals
a splash of hope stark against
the blandness of everything.

The shadow of an impending end
stretches from the future into
this space between The Living
and the bleeding out of life
but till it comes, life lingers still.