I can't say I understood what happened in this one either. Two people (or anthropomorphized things) are attracted to each other but are also mutually destructive? Taken at face value, it sounds more like Rose was already in flames and they just realized they'd both die, but I also got the sense that their contact instigated it or at least made it worse. only they get together at the end, so I'm not sure how a rose being cast aside applies here. I'm probably way off base here, but the allusions to chemistry have me thinking of rubidium, which would have a similar etymology as Rose, referring to red, and it is highly reactive. Rhyme and meter don't have any hiccups.

Our love was so intense at start
And prone to sudden surge
They kept the two of us apart--
But now, we swiftly merge!
We heralds of catastrophe
Appointed on the hour
Arise now in a curling cloud,
We bloom, a desert flower.

>>Pascoite
>>GroaningGreyAgony

Thanks, folks!

The prompt struck me immediately as the perfect first line to a parody Emily Dickinson poem--our first person narrator would throw the rose away, but the rose would refuse to go. But I couldn't decide on what sort of tone to use: make it a humorous "The Cat Came Back" sort of thing or go for more of a horror thing, the rose's stem digging its thorny stem into the narrator's arm and like that.

So I went a completely different way and came up with this. Some rewriting, and there might be something here...

Mike