Sickly Sweet

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.

Our love was Tightening a corset while gripping a bedpost Our love was Thrown Kitchen Chairs  Shattered Bathroom Mirror Our love was  Shut eyes Dark hickeys  Our love was Overflowing glass of wine, sticky hands, sticky table Heavy Hotel Curtains Our love was Deep wound, just clotting Counting seconds on a broken clock  Our love was  Forget your day; Forget my name Lips sealed; Mind shut Our love was Wolf Eyes; Dark Night Makeup sex; No fight Our love was No goodbye Just gone

I forget his name, I don’t think I ever knew it Excerpt from the poem The Ways in Which I Have Been Loved

“Thank you,” I manage. It is the first thing that comes to mind that is simple enough to get out without making a fool of myself. More than I already have anyway.

Jun just keeps staring at me with a look I cannot distinguish. Like they are searching me while feeling a million things too, the air between us seems to grow tense with that energy and so I feel the need to fill the growing silence.

“I-,” my voice falters, “I’m sorry.”

I am sorry. I repeat these words in my mind. Thank you, I am sorry. Again and again. I am sorry. Thank you. And I wonder if these two phrases find their place of rest in my mouth so easily and feel so natural on my lips because they are the most often used phrases of my vocabulary or because they are the only phrases that I know that can say everything that I need and more in less than 3 words.

Jun shakes their head.

“No, don't thank me,” a crease appears in their forehead. “Talk to me, tell me what’s wrong. What happened?”

I find myself shaking my head now. The pressure on my chest seems to return and I take a deep breath trying to stay calm.

Then their hand is on mine. Sliding over the surface of the counter till its weight is a welcome one over my fingers and I glance over at our two hands. Their’s, pale and light, mine, clammy and heavy. Always heavy. Every part of my carrying a wordless weight.

“Adam…” I drag my gaze over to them.

“It’s nothing,” I manage.

They look at me with a million things words cannot hold.

“Nothing.” They repeat.

“Nothing.” I try replying more convincingly wondering how they'll buy it if even I can't.

“You're telling me you missed your scheduled flight home, disappeared in a foreign country, sent everyone on a wild goose chase looking for you, had Evelyn basically threaten war on France to sit on an abandoned kitchen’s flooded floor and have a panic attack-- for nothing?”

I swallow hard, shying away from the accusation and irritation in their voice. It didn’t sound too convincing to me either I had to admit.

“Evelyn did what…?”

Jun lets out a sigh and pitches the bridge of their nose with their free hand and their glasses lift up a little.

I feel a small pang in my chest and look back over at our hands and cautiously turn my hand over and run my thumb over their fingers so our hands are now palm to palm.

When I look back at Jun they are looking at me as they let out a small breath.

“I’m sorry,” I repeat. It's instinctive. But not. Because I mean it. So much more than I’ve meant it before.

“I don’t need you to be sorry,” they beseech, “Adam just tell me what happened,”

“It’s nothing,” I say again but continue before they can interject.

“I swear.” I swallow hard. “I just wasn't ready to go home yet.”

The grip on my hand tightens a little. I can feel all the things we never talked about filling the spaces between my words and the pauses in our conversation.

I do not look away this time but instead look into their eyes. I find myself almost hoping they can read all the things I can never say simply by looking at me. I try to answer all the unspoken questions and I can tell they are trying to read them all. But we are only human. Only two mismatched people in a flooded kitchen in France. Only a boy servant and a foreign ambassador trying to understanding things words will not allow. Like a language barrier that we are trying to overcome but life does not mean us to.

Jun chews on their lip tensely and thoughtfully before finally speaking.

“I know I didn’t ask you a lot about...everything. I don’t know if that was the right move, or not,” their fingers run slow circles over the back of my hand.

“And I know there are a lot of things you can't say,” They shake their head.

“A lot of things you won’t say. I can only try to understand though I never really will. I know two weeks of conversations over tea in the middle of the night really isn't enough to get to know someone, or their life, or what they're going through,” They shift their weight.

“But Adam, I can’t help you unless you tell me something constructive. Tell me something. Anything. It will be confidential. I can get you help. I can talk to someone in human rights. The U.N., I can see if I can get you asylum somewhere.”

It is me shaking my head now retracting my hand. No. What don't they understand? This is what I didn't want. No. They can't dangle this in front of me. This possibility of the impossible.

“You have to talk to me. Adam, look at me.”

“No.” I am pressing my back into the edge of the counter behind me till it is digging into my spine.

“No. No. NO. I can't. I- I just can’t. You can’t promise me those things. They won't let me go. They'll find some technicality. Some loophole. They find out. They always do.”

I think of everything Evelyn is capable of. All the said and unsaid threats. All the things she’s done and is yet to do.

“I can’t. No, I--”

“Adam--”

“NO! Okay? No.”

“Adam, anything. Please. Let me help you.”

--Excerpt from A Woman’s World Chapter: Leaving France--

Mating Bond: Rant

Soooooo I’ve read enough of Twilight and ACOTAR to have a idea of this imprinting/mating bond/ultimate fate couple idea. 

But honestly, the idea is so toxic. Like even Rhysand talks about how some people think they ‘own’ the person they imprint on and how fate or whatever upper power decides can pick mates poorly and basically almost decides based on who will produce the most powerful offspring but that is beside the point. 

I know you can reject it but how? If you do figure out this person is wrong for you...how can you turn away? Push past the pull to do what’s right? Look at how toxic Rhysand’s parents’ relationship turned out to be--even Tamlin’s parents and Sam Uley and Emily Young, these relationships were unhealthy, but they could not look past this blinding love or bond or attraction or whatever you want to call it.

Think about it though. You’re going about whatever life and you fall in love with someone. You really love them. With every part of your being. Every freaking molecule. But there is no bond. But who cares right? What matters is that love, that feeling, that connection...right? WRONG. How can you love someone for however many days, weeks, years, centuries, with this looming threat that they may not be ‘The One’? 

And what of marriages then? You marry someone, give your life to them, let them know you in every way only to find out fate has other plans? What about that underlying guilt that you guys don’t have ‘that bond’? That your love isn't good enough? 

Even if you do look past it, trust that either your relationship is strong enough as it is, or that the bond will ‘snap into place’ eventually, what if you do end up meeting you mate? The one? How do you come to terms with that? Even if you love the person you are with from the bottom of your soul, how can you look past those instinctive feelings? 

How many people even find this ‘mate’? I mean look at Rhysand and Feyre, even Jacob and Renessme, can your mate be another species? How does that even work if humans don’t have that bond?

Thanks for coming to my TEDx Talk...

“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 

There is comfort and terror in knowing that no one will ever know me like I know myself.

The Intangible Things