A poet has fallen in love.
WORD COUNT: 637 GENRE: Poetry AGE RATING: Teen+
WARNINGS: Blood Mention, Mild Stalking, Implied Sex
***
Tap. Tap. Tap.
Ink-stained fingers smearing
coffee across keys, the only
sound that lingered around the worst
table in the café.
The plug sockets didn’t work right,
needing a lot of wiggling and
twisting just to give him an
ounce more of
power,
though nobody else was using the ones
nearest them.
He would ask to move.
His laptop was dying.
But it was always dying and
he didn’t see the point
in changing that.
He would stay where
he was, staining the table
with black coffee, and chewing on
liquorice he had gotten
from the corner-shop next door.
He knew that others
would not like the taste,
if it sat upon their tongues.
But his tongue was only his
own.
***
A bitter coffee.
A creaking chair.
A coffee-ringed table.
A gaggle of shrill teens.
A barista that stank of weed.
A bell above the door that jangled.
That he hated.
A risen head.
Dark eyes narrowed
A man walked in
with hair like a
waterfall of
Blood
and
a
chiselled
jaw.
He did not notice the writer,
though the mind of the
writer had already
written
a thousand tales.
***
The man ordered
a dark hot chocolate with
no cream, and the
barista had not,
as she had asked everybody,
ask him if he wanted
marshmallows.
He
did not ask.
He did not look
at the
writer.
He carried
nothing
on his
person.
He sat in the seat
furthest from the
writer, without
a book,
a phone,
a laptop,
anything.
And he stared into the shadows.
And the writer stared into him.
***
A chiselled white face.
Arms that looked thick
beneath the coat.
A body to climb like a tree.
The writer chewed on
the end of his pen,
though he only wrote
on his laptop.
He chewed.
Until it snapped.
And spilled red ink
down his shirt.
The man did not
look up, even as
the writer
cried out.
***
The writer
had red spilling
down his own shirt
and staining his throat,
in the very same shade
as the hair that spilled
down the man’s
shoulders.
And,
for a moment,
the writer had
no interest
in changing
his shirt.
He should be
stained forever.
Should.
***
The man did not
look at the writer.
But he got up
and placed his
empty mug by
the smoking barista.
And he passed the writer
without looking,
without looking,
without looking,
without looking,
without looking,
without looking,
without looking.
And so, the writer
closed his laptop,
left it there,
and followed.
***
Through the window,
he saw a pristine white
carpet, that looked like
footprints had
never
crossed them, and where
crimson hairs
had never fallen.
The writer could see
through the
living-room window,
but could not see
his new man.
***
Through the window,
he saw a polished
marble surface, and
so many knives on the walls
that the man would
not look amiss in a butchery,
though he hardly
looked
like a butcher,
or anything of the sort.
The writer could see
through the
kitchen window,
but could not see
his new man.
***
He found a ladder.
Up, he climbed,
up, up, up, up, up, up, up,
up, up, up, up, up, up, up,
up, up, up, up, up, up, up,
up, up, up, up, up, up, up,
up, up, up, up, up, up, up,
up, up, up, up, up, up, up,
up, up, up, up, up, up, up.
Through the window,
he now saw a well-made
bed, and whips
and chains
nailed to the wall,
polished and pristine,
like they were beloved.
And—
And a hand
smashed through
the window.
Inside to outside.
Grabbing the writer
by the collar
and dragging him
through.
***
Blood upon the
writer’s tongue.
Blood upon the
writer’s throat.
And
he
could
not
have
been
happier.
