Our Love WasCoffee Lots Of MilkTea Extra SugarOur Love WasLight Left On For You At HomeBrushing Gloved

Our love was Coffee lots of milk Tea extra sugar Our love was Light left on for you at home Brushing gloved hands on Fall walk Our love was Handmade Gifts Bad jokes Our love was  Deep breath sighs Domestic Life Our love was Cooking pasta with the wooden spoon Conversations about the weather Our love was Christmas Carol  Candygram Our love was  Casual Closeness Comforting Caress

The Dreamer and The Chef - Excerpt from the poem The Ways in Which I Have Been Loved

Our love was Baby blue leather jacket  And sunflowers Our love was Second grade "What do you want to be when you grow up" And the "What do you like on your pizza" question Our love was  Lullabies on the piano Heart in timezone tatters Our love was More I miss you Than I love you Our love was Cute animals GIF's  And orange juice Our love was Not knowing of the broken or the healing But just knowing you are helping  Our love was Me trying to be happy Just for you Because you made me want to

The Belgium Boy, The Boyfriend Boy Excerpt from the poem The Ways In Which I have Been Loved

Sickly Sweet

Sweet nothings roll off your tongue and reach for me

They are sticky like honey. 

Like blood. Like glue.  

I can't seem to move. 

Or wash them off of me.

It was saccharine at first. 

Now it is just trapping. 

I find it harder and harder to breathe. 

You cover me in mouse trap glue

And shove poems of unrequited love down my throat.

I still try and be nice. 

Because honey is still honey 

You are still you

But my mother always warned me, to steer clear of boys 

And too many sugary treats.

I turn my head when your breath comes to close

You think the goosebumps are of pleasure but they are a break out rash of fear.

I do not write unrequited love poems anymore

I write of how I love. 

I write of everything they are 

And I let out the words like breath to the wind

I leave them like whispy things. 

Not thick. Or oozing. Or dripping in saturated devotion

Because I still gag on the word beautiful. 

Because know all too well of how suffocating sweet things can be.

Who did it better? 001

The Bow:

Katniss Everdeen vs. Alec Lightwood vs. Feyre Archeon vs. Susan Pevensie

Do not pretend, like you do not see it. The fact that these words are hollow. Look at the gaping abyss in every o and a and d. The fact that these words are unfinished. Lack closure, leave everything open-ended. Look at every c and u and h. The fact that these words are nothing but skeletal frames we beg to support us. See? In every k and t and z.  These words are hollow and unfinished and skeletal.  These words are empty and undeciding and frail. These words mean nothing, until we make them.

“Shall I stab you it the heart?”

She is sitting on my lap in the middle of the empty marble ballroom floor. I take in lungfuls of her, but every breath that comes in must come out. I pray her scent is tattooed on me, on my bare skin.

And I know I will have to wash her blood off and along with it will go her smell and I know that is the point.

“No...it is not a sure thing. I may just bleed,”

She turns her head, just slightly, as though to get more comfortable.

“You should probably slit my throat,” I stiffen, but she picks up a palm and presses a kiss to it and I try to breathe. I really do try. I promise.

“Andrea…” she presses our arms back down across her waist.

“I love you Lucy,”

My grip on the knife is sweaty. She places a firm moist hand over it and places it above or other two arms wrapped around her waist. Poising to strike.

“I want you to remember. He is trying to break you,”

“I love you,” I shake my head, close my eyes, my voice cracks. 

“Andrea, he is trying to break you,”

“He cannot break what is already broken,”

“Listen to me,” and so I do. Shut out that haunting music. Shut out the burning of Emanuelle's gaze. Shut out the pounding of my heart. Shut out the voice that is screaming for me to cover her with my body and let them try to pry her out of my bloody broken hands. Dare them to take her from my lifeless body. Shut out the pleas from my heart to do it now. To do it know and be over with it.

“Remind him that though you are delicate and beautiful like porcelain and may be shattered on this ballroom floor, that when he comes to collect the fractured shards, when he tries to step all over you, remind him you will cut the soles of his feet and leave his fingers scared.”

She tightens her grip on my hand with the blade. I am not sure if she is trying to assure me or is afraid I will plunge into my own heart.  

“Andrea, do you remember once...I asked you if you remember what your homeland was like? I asked you if you remembered Spain. I asked you if you had forgotten...do you remember?”

I shake my head against her neck. She is such a light thing in my lap. So light. So free. A bird. A bird in a cage. Caged in life. Caged in this room.

“You told me,” a shuddering breath, “you told me that those memories were tucked in the cramped dusty corners of your mind, sealed tight, but always there. Do you remember? You told me you kept your happiness there...to hide it from him. You told me--you told me some things were intangible. That they could not be taken. Seen and felt...but never grasped. Never taken. Your will is intangible Andrea. You soul is intangible. Our love is intangible. In keeping it from him...do not keep it from yourself. I love you so so much, and they cannot take it.”

“I love you too Lucy, I love you so much. I am so sorry. So sorry,”

“Do not be sorry Andrea. Be unapologetic. Exist unapologetically. I will always be here Andrea, I will never leave you. I swear to you that. But you must live. You must live for both of us. You have so much life left. So much life in you. I will wait for you and we will have eternity together.”

And here she was. The soft, Catholic, maid I had met on a Saturday afternoon as she fitted me for a garden party dress. If there was anyone who could make me believe that a God existed it was her. Lucy. My angel. My salvation. My redemption. Lucy. If the gates of Heaven did not open to her then what hope was there for the rest of us. And perhaps I could cling to that. If she was being torn away from me as a torturous lesson, maybe it was because the splendour of the heavens could no longer wait to be reunited with the long lost piece of themselves.

Except from the short story Dance With Her