Submit your work, meet writers and drop the ads. Become a member
Hello, my dearest, my loveliest.
I haven't met you just yet - at least not physically, even though I have seen you many times in my future. In fact, I think I'm in love with you already, and it will be really awkward when I meet you, because when I finally do, I will know, in my very heart of hearts that it is YOU. I will remember what I've already seen, and it will feel right to touch you, to look at you. Just hearing your laughter will make me whole. And I will know it's you.
You will know exactly what kind of coffee I want from Starbucks - you won't forget that I prefer soy milk, you'll know exactly how much sugar (brown!) I take, you'll know what name I want written on the cup - and I won't have to tell you. You won't just let me wear your clothes - you'll hide mine, so that I have no other choice but put your shirt on. You'll know how I like my tea - because that's how you like it too. You'll make waffles for breakfast, and I will frown at you for trying to make me fat, and you'll stuff my mouth with waffles to shut me up. When our little flat needs cleaning, you'll turn the volume up, and sing Queen's I want to break free as you vacuum and I wipe the dust. We'll take turns pushing each other in the cart until they throw us out of the supermarket. You'll order pizza (vegetarian, even though you're not one) and download the new Doctor Who episode when I work late, and come home tired and starved. You'll scold me for smoking and for drinking too much coffee, but will secretly make sure there's always instant coffee in the cupboard and a blanket on the balcony for my midnight smokes. You'll kiss my forehead and make me soup and take my textbooks away when I'm overdoing it. You'll teach me how to eat Chinese with chopsticks and you'll order foreign cuisine and eat from the takeaway boxes when you know we're both too lazy to do the dishes. And when we do do the dishes, we'll end up wet and covered in foam every time, because at the end of the day, we're both three-year-olds. You'll fall asleep on my belly as I read The Lord of the Rings aloud to you, and you'll have Harry Potter marathons with me when my exams are over. You'll always beat me at video games and try to spoil me the new comic book issue I haven't had time to read yet, and every time I'm cross with you, you'll start humming The Rains of Castamere, and you'll hang Targaryen banners on our walls when you're trying to please me. And when we feel like it, we'll have karaoke nights, and even though we both can't sing, we'll scream at the top of our lungs until the neighbours come knocking at the door. We'll go travelling and you'll always let me drive, and you'll never get tired of taking pictures of and with me. When the time comes, you'll propose with the One ring, like I've always wanted to. Even my parents will like you, surprisingly. We'll have our catchphrase and our inside jokes, and we'll understand each other with a mere look. You'll like what I write, but will always give me reasons why you like it, so that I always know you're not being biased. You'll find faults, too, and will let me know, and that's how I'll know it's you. We will watch singalong versions of Camp Rock and High School Musical, and sing along we will. And we'll tickle each other breathless, and we'll have surprise pillow fights. We'll always spend Christmas alone, eating takeaway and drinking hot chocolate and we'll have Weasley-style Christmas sweaters. We'll have a Doctor Who themed wedding, like we've both always wanted to. You won't mind me rumbling random unrelated history facts and ranting about biological inaccuracies in books and movies, and you'll join me in my social justice rants.We'll **** wherever - on the floor, on the table, on the couch, in the bathroom, sometimes even on the bed. You'll always take the blanket, and I'll hate it. You'll hate my eggplant lasagna and the way I always kick my shoes off. I'll hate your annoying habit of never ******* the toothpaste top, and always leaving the lights on. But those are things we can live with.
I don't know how you look or what your talent is, or how old your are, or how big your family is. I don't know where you grew up, I don't know you yet, I don't know anything about you. But I know I'll love you to bits, and so will you, and I can't wait to meet you, my loveliest.
Yours always.
umf
Your lips tracing lines
down my neck.
Your teeth sinking in
setting fire to my skin.
Trapped between your body
and a wall, breathless,
shameless, starving,
I never knew I could be bold.
My nails down your back,
heavy breathing, softer moaning,
and our fingers laced.
I never knew I could be rough,
I never thought I'd rediscover love.
I know how to say
"I love you" in
English and French,
and Spanish and Italian,
and Russian and Bulgarian,
and Arabic and Dothraki
and High Valyrian,
and Klingon,
and in any other language
you ask,
I know how to
write "I love you"
in Gallifreyan and
Tengwar,
I know how to make up
a billion different poems
about my love for you.

But still, it won't make you
love me back. I somehow
was never enough for you.
You keep me awake every night
wondering why you left
and I think it's high time
I started looking up
how to say "I don't hate you",
"I've moved on", "I don't miss you"
and "I am okay" in all these
languages in which
"I love you" didn't matter.
The future has razor-sharp
edges, swiftly cutting
bright red wet and ugly scars.
The past is a blunt knife,
dull and rusty
and I'm being stabbed
and stabbed
and stabbed.
I am stuck in the
present down on my knees
swimming in blood and saliva
with dry tears streaming
down my face
unable to catch a breath
choking on misery
nails dug deep into
my skin
and I am screaming
but no one can hear
and I want to rip
my trachea out and chop
my lungs and eat my heart out
and pull out all
those miles of intestines;
I want to flay my skin
and lay it out for you to
see my scars.
I'm a grotesque of
days long gone
of days that reign
of days that soon will be.
I am the monster you created,
you Dr. Frankensteins,
I am your masterpiece,
I am what you made me
but you won't leave me be.

I know it's called "the present",
but God help me, it's simply not a gift.
p.
I was lost at sea.
You crushed against me like a wave.
You left me breathless.
Revived me with your lips.
You got me on your ship
and taught me how to sail,
my captain.
I'm fiery, impulsive.
I talk too much,
I think too much
and sometimes not at all.
I complain a lot,
and I cry and laugh,
I blab a lot,
overreact.
Hyperbolise,
and overanalyse
and take things wrong
and get offended,
I don't trust,
I hate, I love
with fiery passion,
I've hot blood.

The sea's not always calm,
please captain, take me,
I might be too much,
but try not to let me go.
I could write about your eyes,
your smile, your laugh,
your voice, your face,
your scent, etc., etc..
I could go on for days and days,
about your nose, your hands,
your hair, your chest.
Metaphor after metaphor
I could create
a thousand words about the way
you move, you kiss, you hold my hand...
I could.
I could.
I won't.
I'll write instead
about your brain,
about the way you make me feel,
the way you talk about the stuff you like,
the way you think,
or I could just reduce it
to those simple words
dopamine
serotonin
oxytocin

In general,
you leave me out of breath.
if
                                                 i
         we
                  re
                                    
                                          to
                        
                           f
                            a
                              l­
                                l

  
                         ­    a                          a
                                    ­                                                      t
         ­                           p                                     ­             
                                                   ­                      r

                                 you'd always be there to catch me.
                            a safe place to land, a safe home to haunt,
                                       your arms are my temple,
                                          your shoulders my fort,
                                               my steady pillars,
                                                     my whole
                                                         world
                                                           ­ in
                                                             y
                                                             o
                                                             u
                                                              r­
                                                             b
                                                             o
                                                             n
                                                             e
                                                             s
 Apr 2014 Hope Irons
Pablo Neruda
I am not jealous
of what came before me.

Come with a man
on your shoulders,
come with a hundred men in your hair,
come with a thousand men between your ******* and your feet,
come like a river
full of drowned men
which flows down to the wild sea,
to the eternal surf, to Time!

Bring them all
to where I am waiting for you;
we shall always be alone,
we shall always be you and I
alone on earth
to start our life!
 Mar 2014 Hope Irons
Pablo Neruda
The memory of you emerges from the night around me.
The river mingles its stubborn lament with the sea.

Deserted like the dwarves at dawn.
It is the hour of departure, oh deserted one!

Cold flower heads are raining over my heart.
Oh pit of debris, fierce cave of the shipwrecked.

In you the wars and the flights accumulated.
From you the wings of the song birds rose.

You swallowed everything, like distance.
Like the sea, like time. In you everything sank!

It was the happy hour of assault and the kiss.
The hour of the spell that blazed like a lighthouse.

Pilot's dread, fury of blind driver,
turbulent drunkenness of love, in you everything sank!

In the childhood of mist my soul, winged and wounded.
Lost discoverer, in you everything sank!

You girdled sorrow, you clung to desire,
sadness stunned you, in you everything sank!

I made the wall of shadow draw back,
beyond desire and act, I walked on.

Oh flesh, my own flesh, woman whom I loved and lost,
I summon you in the moist hour, I raise my song to you.

Like a jar you housed infinite tenderness.
and the infinite oblivion shattered you like a jar.

There was the black solitude of the islands,
and there, woman of love, your arms took me in.

There was thirst and hunger, and you were the fruit.
There were grief and ruins, and you were the miracle.

Ah woman, I do not know how you could contain me
in the earth of your soul, in the cross of your arms!

How terrible and brief my desire was to you!
How difficult and drunken, how tensed and avid.

Cemetery of kisses, there is still fire in your tombs,
still the fruited boughs burn, pecked at by birds.

Oh the bitten mouth, oh the kissed limbs,
oh the hungering teeth, oh the entwined bodies.

Oh the mad coupling of hope and force
in which we merged and despaired.

And the tenderness, light as water and as flour.
And the word scarcely begun on the lips.

This was my destiny and in it was my voyage of my longing,
and in it my longing fell, in you everything sank!

Oh pit of debris, everything fell into you,
what sorrow did you not express, in what sorrow are you not drowned!

From billow to billow you still called and sang.
Standing like a sailor in the prow of a vessel.

You still flowered in songs, you still brike the currents.
Oh pit of debris, open and bitter well.

Pale blind diver, luckless slinger,
lost discoverer, in you everything sank!

It is the hour of departure, the hard cold hour
which the night fastens to all the timetables.

The rustling belt of the sea girdles the shore.
Cold stars heave up, black birds migrate.

Deserted like the wharves at dawn.
Only tremulous shadow twists in my hands.

Oh farther than everything. Oh farther than everything.

It is the hour of departure. Oh abandoned one!
Next page