Not marble, nor the gilded monuments
Of princes shall outlive this powerful rhyme,
But you shall shine more bright in these contents
Than unswept stone besmeared with sluttish time.
When wasteful war shall statues overturn,
And broils root out the work of masonry,
Nor Mars his sword, nor war’s quick fire shall burn
The living record of your memory.
‘Gainst death and all-oblivious enmity
Shall you pace forth; your praise shall still find room
Even in the eyes of all posterity
That wear this world out to the ending doom.
    So, till the judgment that yourself arise,
    You live in this, and dwell in lovers’ eyes.

Let not my love be called idolatry,
Nor my belovèd as an idol show,
Since all alike my songs and praises be
To one, of one, still such, and ever so.
Kind is my love today, tomorrow kind,
Still constant in a wondrous excellence;
Therefore my verse to constancy confined,
One thing expressing, leaves out difference.
“Fair, kind, and true” is all my argument,
“Fair, kind, and true” varying to other words;
And in this change is my invention spent,
Three themes in one, which wondrous scope affords.
    Fair, kind, and true, have often lived alone.
    Which three till now never kept seat in one.

They said his steps sounded like the ticking of a time bomb.

Her knees were in the dirt.
Blood, sweat and tears filled the earth,
and the sky cracked open.
Come closer, it said.
She shook her head, remembering the slow steps of her father’s father. The yellow fingers that toyed with the fabric between buttons,
The bruises that she wore on her abdomen.
The fear.
The pain.
It’s all the same,
it’s all the same.

You painted
a sunset in the back of my
throat, so that every time
we kissed, you could taste
something beautiful that
wasn't me.