Tell me five things you can see.

I can see the glimmering flame of a scented candle. It's spiced gingerbread, or pumpkin spice sugar cookies, or something. The flame dances above the wick, swirling hypnotically in my vision.

I can see my cat, curled up and sleeping soundly beside me. His little chest is rising and falling slowly, and his ears flick every now and then. His paws are embedded into the fabric of my dressing gown.

I can see my lamp, shining a warm yellow light across the room. The body is a dull chestnut brown, but the shade is silvery and glinting with spilled glitter from when I was young and played with fairy dust.

I can see my ring, golden and inscribed with some Hobbit language on both the inside and the outside. I wear it everywhere. It's a bit wet. I just washed my hands.

I see the moth sitting in the corner of the room. It's waiting for me to turn the big lamp on, I think. It's very small, with its wings all tucked in into a little rectangle. I haven't named it.

Tell me four things you can feel.

I can feel the soft cotton fabric of my duvet, running slightly coarse under my fingers as I rub it absently. It's rippling slightly from my fan.

I can feel the air from my fan gently lifting my hair off my pillow, blowing cool winds over my hot neck and chilling my exposed hands.

I can feel my wall and the paint chips flaking off it down the side of my bed. I can feel a small hole in the wall, creaking slightly when I push it.

I can feel my glasses resting on my nose, slightly slipping each second. There's a wisp of hair stuck in the hinge, and I gently pull it out.

Tell me three things you can hear.

I can hear the quiet buzzing of my laptop, humming monotone beside me, its heat slightly warming my ankles.

I can hear my fan whirring, singing out its little tune as it rotates around the room, occasionally clicking as it knocks against a bottle of body spray or cologne.

I can hear my cat purring softly as he sleeps. He sneezes every once in a while, and he burrows into his paws with a small squeak as I watch.

Tell me two things you can smell.

I can smell my candle burning away, a Christmassy scent that reminds me of watching old Netflix shows with a mug of mulled wine or gingerbread latte.

I can smell my cologne, a Diesel scent that's intoxicating. It's calming, and reminds me of sitting around a picnic table with my friends, rolling dice and leaning on each other too close.

Tell me one thing you can taste.

I can ******* toothpaste, gritty and sweet mint flavoured. If I lick my lips, I can still taste a bit of the ice cream I was eating - chocolate caramel.

Please relax, and go to sleep. You're too tired. I love you. Goodnight. I'll talk to you tomorrow.

What I feel for you is akin to how the floorboards hug the wall at the corner of the ballroom.
Smothered in gleaming tile, I lie beneath, fighting to breathe at the very seams, so close to you.
I am worn, and old, and my nails are ripped to shreds as I claw my way through the throng of porcelain pink people to you.
The touch of me against the very smallest part of you is enough for me to fall still and gaze not at the dancers in their gowns but the unassuming dark corner towards which I endlessly reach.

Villain. You have stolen my grace.

When I poise myself to smile and simper, your bitter shadow fills my mouth and makes me shudder.
When I ascend the steps to my royal quarters, I trip on the memory of your presence by my side.
When I lay in bed, artfully sprawled across the velvet sheet, your forceful weight crushes my limbs and my lungs.
When my eyelids flutter shut, intent on transporting me to dream-land, all I see is your divine, ethereal face.
When I fall in love, I am eager to forget and begin anew with my sweet knight in disguise, but your crestfallen expression slows my pace.

I may be free of you and your enchantment, your enthralling spell, but by the gods, Villain - I couldn't protect it all, and so you have stolen my grace.

humming strings pick apart the
quiet in the night air, in a simple
and easy rhythm, shivering
through the grass in a dream,
dark at the edges, but a tune
that i remember the words to

dusk in the moonlight, cloud
cover so the comets are just
glowing streaks in the gloom,
but silhouettes on top of the
hill are looking up, missing pieces,
on a cold, windless night

one of them's singing, quiet
and warm, red nails in the soil,
other hand wrapped around a
wrist where the hand ends in
green, in shimmering strings,
trying to press down the chords

it is bitterly cold, and he can't
feel his fingers, they're dreaming
of summer and a breath of it
remains on the air, warmly
fumbling the lyrics under the
clouds, on a hill next to home

and the denim is thick and the
rhythm is less steady, but the
music continues, and a young
child looks out of her window,
and sees two angels on a
hilltop, singing to the sky

the sky, is falling down,
the stars are thin
and the song is
ending, but they
play the final
note, and
it never
fades

June is the soft smile of your best friend as you regale them with your tall tales about how the weekend went, and their sweet giggle as you eat cheap lollies from a shady ice cream van.

June is a spinning ferris wheel at dusk, overlooking a royal blue bay scattered with olive green tents, and your little cab on the wheel that you get into over and over again.

June is the crisp notes that you spend on thin, wispy clothes in high-street stores, and the novelty sunglasses you try on in an opticians and end up buying because they're cool.

June is the flavours of a spice-infused curry, and a large spoonful of rice afterwards to soothe the burn. It is the tall cup of fizzy cherryade that tastes like it did when you were 7, but a bit different.

June is rainbow-spotting with your friends, and being yourself, and maybe for once not feeling so alone in a world that's usually so cold.

June is flying the flag of the weirdos, and jumping up and down to rock music, and flinging open your windows dramatically in time to the soundtrack of a musical. It is 80s music so loud that you can already see the noise complaint, but the complaint never comes.

June is a month of discovery and talking about nothing for hours on end. June is about hope, and a dawn for something different. June is about having a dream, and having the power to make it come true, because no matter who you are, you deserve for your dream to come true.

June is your time, but only if you let it be so. Will you stand? I will be beside you. I love you, and I'm glad you exist.

carefully reaching for your hand
it's the first day I've seen you in person.

I've known you for long enough
that I'm surprised when you grab my hand back.

when I look into your eyes, I see fear, and trepidation, and sadness, but also hope and happiness and love.

I will do everything I can
to keep holding your hand.

you hold mine so gently
so carefully. so kindly.

little star,
cold and timeless,
ebbing in the gloom,
breathing like lungs,
exhale dust.

thin blanket,
old and creasing,
grey and faded vermillion,
stealing our shadows,
a penumbra.

aged animal,
majestic in death,
raising its horns skyward,
embers in ashes,
fossilised stone.

our patron,
quiet and brave,
bringer of gentlest creation,
player of sounds,
little star.

imagine if we had a small flat
buried in the middle of the city
like i know you want
away from the sky.

living together and dancing
drinking mocktails and laughing
i want to see you happy
just once. just once.

we could have a dog or a cat, because
we'd be in a penthouse suite looking
over the rainy cityscape
up high in the thin air.

there would be dreams experienced
side by side in the night
and when you say my name
i won't miss a beat.

it's just a fantasy, a novelty
afforded by imagination
so that when i hear your voice
i see our flat in the city
and not what you wish
you
had said
to me.

recipes and bookmarks
in strawberry are falling,
stains upon my fingertips
grasp colourblind for
reds and yellows and pinks

and all they find is dust,
people, just falling away,
crumbling inescapably,
coming apart in my hands, just
cracking, like mirrors,

and all they do is stare,
stare straight at me as they
dissolve like sugar. they don't
stay together, no matter
how much I want them to.

people cannot stay together.
it seems that we're all breaking
at different speeds, and I might
be broken tomorrow, and he
could be next week, and her,

just dust in the cracks, human
skin in the still air, floating
aimlessly until we're
****** up by the hoover
and quietly disposed of.

Oh, sweetheart.
You're every star in the sky.
You remind me of a snowdrop encased in dark, cracked resin. Maybe frozen into the ice, then, deep beneath where the sun ever reached. The pride of the leviathan of the deep.
God, you're breathtaking.
Your eyes convey a thousand wishes, hope still glinting deep in there. You cultivate it like a small ember, a glowing shard of coal in the rain. It never goes out, not all the way. You can always blow it back to life.
You absolutely astound me.
Your bravery, your courage, your presence, it envelops me like the rumble of a thunderstorm deep within my chest. Your existence shines so bright it could light a path through Victorian London smog, your machinations a delightful enigma.
I cannot imagine not knowing you now.
Alabaster and deep azure, soot and iridescent verdant. I could get lost in your soul. Gazing into your mind feels like ****** of a secret, absolute ******. You make my blood boil. My veins are blue, bluest blue, thinking about you.
You're every book on the shelf.
You're every smile from a stranger.
You're every star in the sky.
Oh, sweetheart.

Love can come in four different forms, almost akin to the seasons. It is fluid, and can intertwine with the other seasons, but never truly sits still. Love is never constant, and it fades as quickly as the cooling kiss of a summer breeze.

Springtime love is electric, a bitter hour in which it seems that this love is all that matters. It is all encompassing, and galvanises you into action. To feel Springtime love is to feel alive, after days and weeks and months of quiet. It is the cheer of a crowd, the press of bodies and the pounding in your ears. Springtime love is exciting and new, no matter how many springs you've seen before.

Summertime love is a lazy creek, trickling slowly across the sun scorched rocks of a small waterfall. It is the curling vapour drifting up from the surface of the water, and the sweet lemon in a glass of lemonade. Summertime love is warmth and honey, and its cloying grip is both calming water and slow-burning flame.

Autumnal love is passionate, sour and fast, a blink-and-you'll-miss-it flash of clarity among the Indian summers and oncoming storms. It is the rain bearing down on a windowpane, morose and ferocious, and it is breathtaking. Autumnal love seems like the truest of the four, the kind of pain that one who is in love craves like nothing else. Autumnal love is hopeless, beautiful fury.

Wintering love is not kind, or violent, or sweet. It is the salt on the foam of a crashing wave, a lukewarm coffee abandoned overnight, the eye of the storm you can never escape. Wintering love is acceptance, and sorrow, and blessed silence, and only in winter do the other seasons of love look like a lie. Wintering love is regret, and terrified of when spring arrives once more.

Every time you fall in love, you live the days from spring to winter. Some love-years last days, and others last centuries, ages, eons, until even the sands of time forget that snow or rain ever fell there. The beautiful thing about humans, I find, is that even after a thousand winters, a human can be willing to sacrifice everything for one more spring.

A husk forever blazing black
Apathetic inferno made
Glittering in the moonlight
The band of thieves steal away.

In her roughened burlap sack
She carried the burning shade
Cradled among the glinting gold
Yet longing for the blade.

A creature full of foul designs
Denizens of the glade
A forest of young lovers' kisses
Renders her afraid.

She'd been here once before, in fumes,
Breathed the sunlight of the day,
and her heart had gasped
and touched a spark
which set it all aflame.

She was sharp, the thief,
and saw the lovely fae
Who stole her life and sought her soul
And burned her just the same.

When she returned, all was calm
Lady long absconded
With her love to the fae so cruelly bonded
Her loss a bitter balm.

The thief and the fairy met one night
And found solace in another
And since it burned so midnight bright
Both women lost a lover.