Her: Would you still love me if my beauty faded?
Him: Would you still love me if my money vanished?
She looked into his eyes and smiled,
they laughed and poured another glass.
Knowing that their love was based on beauty and wealth
and without them they would be left with nothing but ill health.

Every writer has a cold heart. It lives inside the apartment building of their ribs, on the very top floor close to the fire escape, where it can flee through the window if need be. They like to ruin the things they write about. Even the moon feels broken when they’re done with it. Nothing a writer mentions in their work can ever be whole again.

If writers had gardens, they would be full of words, buried deep down under the sweet dark soil like vegetable seeds. They take root and grow there, sometimes for months, sometimes for years, until a story is born, and then they bloom. That’s why so many well-known authors had green thumbs. In their spare time you can find them out on the terrace, smoking a cigarette or drinking tea, maybe down at the beach with their limbs splayed out in the water like the five points of a star.

Writers are easy to fall in love with. They make their lovers feel like ghosts, transient and luminescent. When they have *** it’s never just ***. They speak when they’re making love, endless sentences of poetry and prose. Some of their best works are created when wrapped around the body of another. They’re always taking mental snapshots of the way their skin fits into someone else’s. They notice every little thing. Each bruise, freckle, callus, and vein. They could write an anthology all about the hidden parts of the body.

When a writer captures you, all you can do is stand like a deer in headlights until they’re finished with you. They’ll keep you locked up in their den for days, their pen endlessly moving across paper. You’ll never forget the sound of that typewriter. It’ll haunt you in your sleep. They’ll let you drown. If you were at the bottom of the ocean, with the bubbles already escaping from your lips, they wouldn’t save you. There would be no anchor to throw down to you, no lifeboat to come your way. Writers always let their subjects drown. It’s just easier that way.

And if a writer falls in love with you, you’re done for. Be prepared for a terrifying existence. They’ll want to watch you all the time. You’ll live off of ramen noodles and packets of instant coffee, and your limbs will always be wrapped around theirs in the bathtub. The coldness of their heart may melt a little, until it’s less like the Arctic and more like a glacier. Only you can warm your hands over their fire. But they’ll **** you, slowly, without mercy. They’ll **** you with pure poetry and prose. You can never escape from their stories. If a writer falls in love with you, you will forever be caught up in the web of their words.