name:  Jen "WaterBug" Scanlon
age: 17
location: Montana
Title: Waxed Rose

Waxed Rose

In attempts to preserve its beauty, a rose can be dipped in hot, colored  wax. To retain the tangy bittersweet fragrances that normally accompany a  rose, the wax is scented. Many times, a hand is covered in wax, grasping at  the rose. Creative as it may be, symbolic it ever lies. The desperate hands  of youth, reaching out, terrified of age, clinging to the beauty of the  rose, using memory as an excuse, trembling into the future. Little is it  known that even beneath the perfumed wax, the rose wilts and browns. The  colors are distorted, the wax melts. Left clinging to a fantasy, clawing at a wish, the illusion deflates. The truth is found.