anti-simile

Here is the unspoken, widely-known truth:
Love is not like a rose, and has never been.
A rose is a flower, never more than one thing,
While love is always many, some never seen.

A rose is famed for its sweet, beautiful scent;
Love, though, can be a twisted, stinking thing.
Love leaves the kinds of scars that may never fade,
But the prick of a thorn is merely a sting.

For all its different colours, petals, and thorns,
A rose is the soul of simplicity.
Love you can hold without ever knowing,
Subtle and sly, the heart of duplicity.

Love need not wait for its season to bloom,
And requires no sunlight or water to thrive.
When plucked from the ground, a rose has days to live,
Though even without roots, love can survive.

They share delicate and fragile beauty,
But of two different and contrasting kinds.
One you can see, immortalize in a frame,
While the other exists only in your mind.