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The roses that are left on two graves that lie just metres apart are mostly red, of course. Maybe it’s just coincidence that red, the colour of the revolution, also stands for love when it comes to roses.
Roses are tough, persistent plants. In centuries to come, when this part of the graveyard is grown over, quiet and all but forgotten, there will be, among the tangle of shrubs and wildflowers, two strong rose plants, growing and twining through each other from those graves. Perhaps they've grown from the long-stemmed flowers that were laid on the graves, and found friendly soil in which to put down their roots. Perhaps bees, searching for sweet nectar, took pollen from one rose to another, and these entangled, thorny, close-embraced shrubs are the result.
Here and there, the briars have grafted themselves onto each other. You can’t separate these plants, and it would cost you bloodshed if you tried.
In spring, birds nest safely in their branches. In summer, the plants are covered in flowers of deepest red, and in autumn, those same birds and their offspring gorge on the rose-hips. In winter when there’s ice on the boughs, and the diamond-bright stars look down on them, the plants seem to hunker down and huddle closer together, sheltering the small creatures of the undergrowth - and when spring comes again, their strong seedlings grow and flourish and flower in their turn.