The Coital Rose: a Sestina

I decided to give up the ghost,
call it quits on the rose
of romanticized hearts on fire,
just like cigarettes forever pre-coital,
I miss them in pangs like scarlet
rivers running South of the border

gather steam, roll over a border
town, the diminished and dim ghost
of desire. Spring unrolls like scarlet
runways for the few that smell of rose
petals in the dead littered coital
fan covering beds, begging fire

to spark its red dryness, fire
falling back like petals at bed's border
of blanket and body and in coital
margins wandering like young ghost
writers, scaling the hills that rose
as the morning band of scarlet

frosted the tree tops in scarlet
rims like the forest caught fire
in a ring dilating, like a rose
slowly blooming sunlight borders,
a wreath lit by the holy ghost
that burns as hot as coital

fevers fueled by the lack of coital
exchange, cheeks burn scarlet
like a Southern bell's ghost,
and immaterial as fire.
Creased lines denote the borders
I've crossed in retreat. A rose

has thorns complicating the rose,
barbs to mimic the coital
pain of mortality, it's borders
clear after acts of scarlet
life propagating like stolen fire
of god's-become cultural ghosts.

I court ghosts with the holy rose
of spiritual fire, approach coital
acts of rich scarlet, forming, everywhere, borders.